In a statement to Radio Brčko, the Coordinator for Public Administration Reform Davor Šolaja announced that the first meeting of the Coordination Committee will be held in the first quarter of 2024, and will be consisted of entity prime ministers, the chairperson of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the mayor of Brčko District of BiH.
“Through the joint work of the state and entity coordinators, as well as the government, we managed to adopt the document on the Common Platform and prepare for the next steps, which are foreseen in that document. One of the most important steps is the first meeting of the Coordination Committee. At that meeting, the Rules of Procedure of the Coordination Committee will be adopted. Also, we will go through each point and the ‘bottlenecks’ will be marked, i.e. the problems that we will try to eliminate”, Šolaja explained.
He mentioned another important event in 2024.
“A donor conference will also be organized, where we expect to collect a huge amount of money for public administration reform. According to the estimate of our partners from SIGMA, about 80 million euros are needed for a comprehensive reform of public administration. We will determine in all governments what amount from the budget will be allocated for this purpose. We expect to collect certain funds at the conference”, said Šolaja.
The coordinator for public administration reform of the Brčko District of BiH recalled the multi-year standstill in the reform, which was resolved in 2020, and resulted in the extension of the PAR Strategic framework and the Action plan.
“We managed to overcome the blockade at the state level. This also coincided with Bosnia and Herzegovina receiving candidate status for EU membership. In 2021, we appointed supervisory teams as well as their deputies in order to implement the Strategic framework itself, as well as the Action plan that was set for the entire BiH, which of course also includes the Brčko District of BiH”, Šolaja mentioned.
According to him, public administration reform is one of the 14 priorities that BiH must fulfill on the way to the European Union, and the PAR Fund has now been reactivated and money is available for projects in this area.