Compliance with the European Union’s budgetary, financial control and audit requirements is one of the basic obligations of EU membership. SIGMA examines this in two publications that chronicle the experiences of seven EU Member States, including its three newest adherents, in integrating EU...

The European Commission requested Sigma to carry out a study on the regulatory management capacities of the ten countries that joined the EU on 1 May 2004 to learn more about their Better Regulation practices, exchange good practices and make suggestions for further improvements. This study was...

This publication is a tool for designers of new civil service pension schemes in central and eastern Europe. It presents civil service pension schemes in five OECD Member countries and ten central and eastern European countries. In most central and eastern European countries, people employed in...

This publication contains an overview of the seminar, background papers — including an inventory of how candidate countries plan to manage European integration — as well as ten points which emerged during the panel discussions of senior negotiators. Chapters have been grouped around the...

This paper attempts to identify the standards to which EU candidate countries are expected to conform in order to align their public administrations with those of EU Member States. Originating from SIGMA’s work on public administration reform in central and eastern European countries, in...

This publication contains those papers presented at the seminar: the Issues Paper prepared by Professor Jacques Ziller, University of Sorbonne, and five country papers prepared by national experts, presenting the situation and experience in their countries. SIGMA has published these documents...

This publication is based on a Sigma paper and on reports by EU Member States prepared in 2005 at the request of several new Member States. The original paper and some Member State reports were then used as background documentation for a Sigma workshop for countries in the CARDS region on the...

All Member States of the EU and countries from Central and Eastern Europe use agencies of various shapes and sizes as part of their system of public administration. The legal forms vary widely from country to country depending on the legal tradition and the system of administration. Public...

The political agendas in the central and eastern European countries (CEECs) imply major democratic and economic reform programmes. Macro-economic stabilisation, privatisation, European integration, reform of the welfare systems, reform of tax systems, decentralisation to self-government are...

Nine central and eastern European countries — Albania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic — were represented in Warsaw at the meeting of senior officials from centres of government, organised by the SIGMA Programme and held on 27...