A public administration school for the Western Balkans, with support from the European Commission, will soon be operational in the Balkan region. Representatives from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo came to Brussels on May 2 to sign a protocol thus officially launching the Regional School for Higher Education in Public Administration Reform (SHEPAR).

The overall aim of SHEPAR is to achieve the following:

• Improve regional cooperation in the field of public administration;
• strengthen administrative capacity in the countries of the region, as required by the European integration process;
• develop human resources and train civil servants in line with the principles of the European administrative space.

The school, which will operate initially as a network, will receive funding from the European Commission. The latter has committed one million Euro to support the school’s launch and activities, while a further one million Euro will come from the EU’s CARDS programme.