Project title: European Union Integration Process Promoting Activities

Project acronym: EUIPPA

Programme: Erasmus+

Action type: Jean Monnet Support to Associations

Project summary: The project will help to promote the identified topics which are relevant to the Jean Monnet programme through new deliverables which will provide adequate information and facts relevant to teaching and training on EU public policies within public administration and policy programmes. Through these activities, NISPAcee wishes to bring a sustainable solution to the growing need of both the public and private sectors in target countries to foster studies on the EU integration process and its impacts on Public Administration and Public Policy Programmes and to understand the functioning of EU institutions and the possible impact of their policies.

Objective: To increase awareness, understanding and knowledge about EU public policies to NISPAcee members and the wider public, thus contributing to their EU integration process.

European Union membership has had special importance for new member states in the NISPAcee region as these countries have become part of the European Administrative Space. Our national administrative systems differ from each other, but we have agreed upon a common definition of administrative principals as being the set of rules and principles applied to the organisation and management of public administration and to the relationship between administration and citizens.

The main administrative principles are as follows:

- reliability and predictability (legal certainty),

- openness and transparency,

- accountability,

- efficiency and effectiveness.

The reasons why NISPAcee has had to evolve avery important, multilateral bridging role in the EU integration process:

- to bring together Western and Eastern European scholars from various countries to conduct comparative analyses on EU topics, regional issues and problems,

- to establish contact between European Union new member states’ scholars and scholars from outside the European Union (Eastern partnership countries, Russia, Caucasus and the Western Balkans and Central Asia).

Methodology:

Nowadays Public Administration systems and public organisations in the region face a number of common and specific challenges. They have to be more open and more transparent, accessible and consultative, and with the new upcoming 7-year financial period (2014-2020), they must raise awareness of European topics at the highest level. They must enhance public sector performance by increasing formalised planning, reporting and control across public administration systems. They must introduce performance management and budgeting and increase managerial flexibility. Public administrations must modernise accountability and control through ex-ante to ex-post control and develop active communication tools with the public for the mobilisation of citizens’ participation and understanding of the national, as well as Union, decision-making processes.