Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the Organisers, it is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the 24^thNISPAcee Annual Conference in Zagreb, Croatia, organised by NISPAcee and the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb.

The main theme of the conference is Spreading Standards, Building Capacities: European Administrative Space in Progress. We are witnessing a specific process of spreading various standards throughout Europe, both in the east and the west. These standards stand out and are the result of efforts to increase public administration capacities to cope with the increasingly complex and worst problems of the contemporary world. Good European governance, on the one hand and good administration on the other, are probably the best known components of the common European Administrative Space. It is of special importance for European citizens and those who come to European territory because they can rely on the predictable, lawful, and reliable functioning of public authorities at all governmental levels. For this reason, it deserves all possible scientific and expert attention, as well as massive research efforts.

It is for this reason that we would like to gather together the widest possible academic and professional community to present conceptual papers, research results, and other scientific and expert papers and presentations dealing with the issues relating to European Administrative Space, with particular emphasis on its importance for CEE countries. With this conference, our wish is to increase interest in south-east European countries, for which the EAS is a specially vivid and intriguing concept.

There are many themes, research questions, issues, and subjects within the broad notion of EAS. Many of them have already been listed in the Call for Papers for our conference. We would like to mention a few, such as good European governance, transparency and open government, harmonisation and administrative convergence, administrative traditions and resistance towards standardisation, new developments in public and administrative law as the answer to European harmonisation, adaptation of public sector management to multi-level governance, European integrated administration, and so forth.

We believe that this conference can bring together renowned scholars, researchers, experts and professionals, students and other participants from all over the world. Zagreb, as the capital of the 28^th EU Member State, seems to be the right place to look for the answers to all the aforementioned challenges connected to the past, present and future of European integration in general and European Administrative Space in particular. Croatia can serve and is willing to serve as the link pin between the EU and the Western Balkan accession countries. This sheds a special light on our conference in Zagreb. We are looking forward to welcoming you in Zagreb!

Marius Profiroiu NISPAcee President Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies Romania	Ivan Kopric Chair or The International Program Committee Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb Institute of Public Administration, Croatia