Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 25th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview III. PA Reform Author(s) Omar Scharifi Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Berlin Germany Title Theory of Public Management and Practice of the EU Twinning Instrument - Regulatory Problems of Participation of EU Member State Administrations in EU Twinning Projects File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Omar Scharifi Abstract Public administration reform is a key objective of the European Union’s relations to EU neighbour and accession countries. One instrument in the European Neighbourhood and the EU Accession policy is the so-called EU-Twinning programme. According to the EU Commission’s DG NEAR, it “is a European Union instrument for institutional cooperation between Public Administrations of EU Member States and of beneficiary or partner countries. Twinning projects bring together public sector expertise from EU Member States and beneficiary countries with the aim of achieving concrete mandatory operational results through peer to peer activities.” The decision between the member state institutions is taken by means of a tender. The most competitive’s member state offer in terms of conceptual quality and provided administrative expertise of personnel is awarded the contract. The twinning instrument itself is currently being reformed. Part of the reform process, in which the EU member states’ institutions are involved, is also the regulation with criteria on the eligibility of administrations to participate from the side of a member state. The paper compares current and future approaches, and draws on research in Public Management for this issue. The current regulation, put down in the so-called “Twinning manual”, is in fact pragmatic, robust and simple with an orientation towards formal criteria: the member state administrative structure is automatically eligible to apply and bid for a twinning assignment. The challenging task begins if it is to regulate convincingly which other institutions beyond the traditional administration is allowed to serve as contracting partner institution or provider of additional services. In times of New Public Management and succeeding concepts, the extent to which the public sector is used to fulfil governmental tasks varies strongly in EU member states. The current, briefly outdated EU Commission’s approach contained the definition of five cumulative criteria for so-called mandated bodies, of whom full or partial or full public ownership was one of them. This paper argues for a less formalistic and stronger functional definition of the eligibility of administrative institutions and any other type of public or private organisations entitled to execute governmental tasks.
