Dec 20, 2017

CEF Joins OECD SIGMA at its 25 Years Anniversary

OECD SIGMA celebrated 25 years of their engagement in strengthening public governance systems and public administration capacities with the ministerial conference in Paris together with their partners and peers, including the CEF. SIGMA and the CEF share target countries and institutions in South East Europe. CEF Director Jana Repanšek was glad to meet ministers of finance from our constituency at the conference--Dragan Tevdovski, finance minister of Macedonia, Octavian Armaşu, finance minister of Moldova, and Dušan Vujović, finance minister of Serbia—who also spoke at the panel discussion on the topic of good public governance.

This high-level conference took place on December 13-14, 2017 at the OECD in Paris, and was jointly hosted with the European Commission (EC). The conference was held to support the greater emphasis placed by the European Union (EU) on the importance of public administration reform and public financial management for its 18 partners from the EU Accession candidate countries and potential candidates, and Neighbourhood countries. In addition, 2017 is the 25th anniversary of SIGMA and the event reflected this successful partnership between the EU and OECD.

OECD SIGMA is a joint program of the OECD and EU that focuses on strengthening public management. Since 1992, SIGMA has been working with EU candidate countries and potential candidates, many of which are now EU members, and, from 2008, with European Neighbourhood countries.

The conference provided a platform to reinforce the usefulness of the Principles of Public Administration for planning and delivering priority reforms and to discuss links between a professional public administration, effective financial management and economic development, as well as challenges for reforms and government priorities, based on the three pillars of public governance, economic development and rule of law, and how the three together make a difference to people’s lives and to the development of societies. Find out more about the conference here.