On November 4, Group for Legal and Political Studies held a Press Conference to present the findings from the monitoring period of the National Implementation Plan for the Stabilization and Association Agreement (NIPSAA) for the period of January – June 2017. Since October 2015 when the SAA was signed, the Government of Kosovo has undertaken responsibility to accomplish numerous tasks and obligations toward fulfilling the requirements deriving from this agreement. To this purpose, the Government of Kosovo has approved NIPSAA by having involved all the relevant institutions in achieving these objectives, and requesting their commitment and responsibility for the successful implementation of the process. This remains the most important national plan for the Kosovo’s accession towards European Union and we’re in the second year of the implementation. On this regard, GLPS has continuously monitored the implementation of this plan with an indicator-based methodology. In addition to monitoring the implementation progress, GLPS also provides regular recommendations on how to more efficiently approach the actions set by this Plan and has thus fur organized numerous policy based debates with all relevant stakeholders with the purpose of discussion some of the main pillars of the SAA.  In addition, same as last year, slow progress has been achieved in fulfilling the foreseen objectives deriving from the SAA. From the detailed assessment that was conducted for the given period, data shows that only 34.8% of the objectives were reached by the Kosovo institutions. Lack of inter-institutional cooperation remains on the key challenges that towards a successful implementation of the objectives set by NIPSAA.  Furthermore, ongoing political crisis and extraordinary elections have also shifted the focus of political spectrum and led to a lower performance in accomplishing the duties assigned by this plan. This said, GLPS has strongly recommended an enhanced inter-institutional cooperation and a stronger commitment by all relevant stakeholders in order to improve the performance in achieving the objective deriving from NIPSAA, and consequently prioritize tasks undertaken by signing this agreement. The final monitoring report will be published by mid-February 2018, containing data from the whole monitoring period for year 2017.

Venue: Group for Legal and Political Studies