The Centre of Government (CoG) supports the head of government and the Cabinet of Ministers in organising the work of government and in policy co-ordination. In order to ensure this, the CoG provides the necessary mechanisms for senior political staff and civil servants to hold relevant policy discussions.
In the Western Balkans, policy co-ordination takes place mostly in formal instances (such as cabinet meetings) rather than in informal ones (such as ad-hoc meetings of senior officials). By contrast, OECD-EU and OECD countries prioritise informal instances, such as ad-hoc meetings of senior officials and task forces.
Regarding formal co-ordination, all Western Balkan CoGs use regular cabinet meetings as a means of ensuring policy co-ordination, which is largely consistent with the practice in OECD-EU countries. In 83% of economies in the Western Balkan region, ad-hoc cabinet discussions on a specific policy or issue are used, while this is the case in 71% of OECD-EU countries. Albania’s CoG uses integrated policy management groups (IPMG), as a mechanism to co-ordinate policy across government priority areas.
Written guidance (such as instruction manuals, guidelines on procedures), as an instrument for co-ordination is used in 83% of economies in the Western Balkan region, while this is only the case in 52% of OECD-EU countries. These results suggest that they prefer a rules-based approach to co-ordination.
Regarding informal co-ordination, in 67% of the Western Balkan region, ad-hoc meetings of senior officials to discuss a particular issue to support cabinet-level discussions take place, compared to 81% OECD-EU countries. Ad-hoc task forces are less common in the Western Balkans than among OECD-EU, where 76% have them. In Kosovo a task force was established for the demarcation of the border with Montenegro. In Serbia, examples include a joint group for improving the country’s position in the World Bank Doing Business Report.
Agenda items submitted to the cabinet for discussion and approval are expected to be final, hence all the CoGs (both from the Western Balkan region and OECD) review that standards and procedures for presentation and preparation are respected, and have the right to return the agenda item for additional work.
CoGs in the Western Balkan region are also responsible for reviewing whether the item has been subject to adequate consultation, and have the authority to require further work. In North Macedonia, the Ministry of Information Society and Administration (MISA) is also responsible for this. Reviewing if the item is in line with the government programme is among the CoG’s tasks. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it presents a non-binding opinion, which implies that the CoG is not fully responsible for curating the items presented before the cabinet.
Reviewing if a regulation meets regulatory quality standards (for example, that cost-benefit and impact analyses have been carried out) is the responsibility of the CoG in Albania, Kosovo and Serbia; although, in the first two, it presents a nonbinding opinion. In North Macedonia, MISA performs quality control for regulatory impact assessments. By comparison, in 81% of OECD countries, the CoG performs such checks. When reviewing adequate costing, the ministry of finance takes the lead in the Western Balkan region. Only one-third of CoGs are involved in this, compared to around 60% of OECD countries. In general, quality is still a concern in many Western Balkan economies when it comes to analysing the impacts of new regulations and policies, despite having formal systems of ex-ante impact analysis (OECD/SIGMA, 2017).
