Putting people first: EU supports public administration reform in Albania

Thanks to EU assistance, the Albanian citizens benefit from improved services by the municipal administration, from more efficient and safer customs, while young people got an opportunity for a merit-based recruitment in the public administration. These achievements have been made within the public administration reform, for which the EU allocated around €85 million since 2012.

Making local governments more efficient

As of 2015, the number of local government units in Albania was reduced by 80 percent – from 384 to 61 municipalities – making them more efficient and transparent to the benefit of all citizens. The EU has supported the consolidation of the reformed municipalities and improvement of the capacities of local administrations. This also helped to increase the efficiency of local public services in rural and suburban areas. So-called “EU corners” are set up in all municipalities, where citizens can obtain information about the EU and opportunities of the EU programmes in Albania (e.g. in areas of education, business support, agriculture, or local development).

Digitalizing access to public service

Before a “One-Stop-Shop” service was provided by the state administration, citizens had to go through a cumbersome process to receive services and visit different offices, often located in different areas of a city. Now citizens can apply for more than just one service in the same agency. Additionally, the digitalization of the local government archives has led to an increased transparency and quicker service for citizens. Web portal E-Albania, for example, has a variety of certificates, attestations, and procedures that can now be requested online, avoiding long queues.

Digitalization is also taking place in the area of recruitment of civil servants, making the recruitment procedure more transparent and merit-based.  Now the applications are done only online through the department’s website, where everyone who has minimally a Bachelor’s degree, can open a personal account and apply for a position.

Through the EU Young Civil Servants’ Scholarship Scheme, young civil servants received training at the Albanian School of Public Administration and at the Ecole National d’Administration (ENA).

More efficient and safer customs

Thanks to the EU, since 2016 the anti-smuggling unit of the Albanian customs has high-tech equipment allowing customs officers to scan transport containers, examine nature and volume of cargo, show transport logs and vehicle owner’s data. This has significantly helped raise the efficiency of the customs’ work. In addition, the EU and Albanian government renovated and equipped the customs laboratory in 2013. It now uses the same analytical techniques as the most modern European labs. Their analysis is comparable with other customs labs and has hence significantly reduced the cost and time of customs procedures for businesses.

Original source: EU External Action
Published on 13 November 2018