On 03 August, Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) – in partnership with Institute GAP and Prishtina Institute for Political Studies (PIPS) – have organised a Press Conference on the topic: “Monitoring the fulfillment of the objectives deriving from the European Reform Agenda (ERA)”, held in Prishtina. The aim of this conference was to present the results stemming from a 6-month monitoring period of the remaining obligations which are foreseen to be finalized during year 2018 and the performance of Kosovo institutions towards fulfilling these objectives in timely manner. The data deriving from the monitoring period shows that under each pillar of ERA, there are some actions that still remain unfulfilled and there is a low progress shown so far in their implementation. More specifically, in the field of good governance and rule of law, the data shows that there has been a significant stagnation in implementing and are still being in a process for the adoption of legislation on the suspension of public officials in cases of corruption, the adoption of the Law on Judges and Prosecutors, the legal package for the Public Administration Reform and the legal package for the Electoral Reform, among others. While in the second pillar – competiveness and investment climate – a considerable progress was shown, but similar to the first one – under this pillar the government has shown low progress in fulfilling actions and objectives, while in some cases there was no progress at all. In specific, some of the actions that remain unfulfilled are the restructuring of Kosovo Investment and Enterprise Support Agency (KIESA), the adoption of the Law on Energy Efficiency and the creation of the corresponding fund and the implementation of the respective measures within the framework of the Connectivity Agenda. In addition, the third and the final pillar involves objectives in the field of employment and education, where again numerous shortcomings were identified. Unfulfilled objectives in this pillar include the adoption of the labour regulations for the Employment Agency, proper budget allocation for the Strategic Education Plan, the Curricula, the Standards and Assessment Agency and the designing of the core curricula for Vocational Education and Training program. The implementation plan of ERA for 2018 includes 29 general measures in total, which are further categorized into 107 concrete actions. The monitoring data shows that out of 105 actions, only 42.99% of them have been fully fulfilled, 17.76% are partially fulfilled, while the remain 25.23% of cations are expected to be processed during the remaining six-month period, until end of December 2018. The data shows that the institutions in Kosovo still lack serious commitment towards fulfilling the obligations that were undertaken with the signing of this agreement, as well as there is a need for further improvement of inter-institutional coordination, in order to reach the desired result and already set objectives under ERA. This activity was supported by a project implemented under the MATRA Programme of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Kosovo.

To access the Monitoring Report in Albanian, please click here.

Venue: Institute GAP offices, Pejton str., 10000 Prishtina, Kosovo