Building up on the results achieved with the “Strengthening EU Administrative Capacities” Programme (2007-2009) which targeted five areas: strategic planning and policy development, capacity building for implementation of the National EU Communication Strategy, preparation of training needs assessment based on functional analysis, support to IPA preparation for central government structures and ICT support for NPAA, the British Embassy continues to support the Secretariat for European Affairs and the General Secretariat of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia in the administration of the EU accession process through a new three-year programme in 4 distinct but clustered strands of project areas:

- Improvement of Legislation and Procedures

Further support will be provided to national structures to perform Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which is a crucial milestone in achieving better quality legislation. Additional activities will be focused on law-drafting standardisation through development and implementation of the FORMEX XML application. This application will improve co-ordination of the legislative preparation, especially the effectiveness of relationship between concerned institutions.

- Preparation for Negotiations

Investing in people skills trough systematic training and expertise of the future negotiation teams will ensure establishment of core team of professionals with proficient skills and knowledge able to manage and to deal with the negotiation process as rather complex process. This component will cover three aspects: (1) Improving capacities of NPAA working groups and future EU negotiation teams for negotiations process through negotiation simulation exercises, training and consultations; (2) Pre-screening of three NPAA chapters through analysis of the level and quality of compliance of EU measures; (3) ICT framework in place to support the overall NPAA planning process, level of implementation and monitoring mechanisms.

- Human Resource and Change Management in public administration

One of the key issues for the EU accession process is the development of merit-based career system in the public administration that will lead to developing, efficient, professional and highly competitive civil service. This project component will target the implementation of HR standards in all line Ministries with the ultimate goal to increase staff productivity and efficiency by strengthening their performance management systems and further delegating managerial responsibilities.

- Communicating for Europe

This Component is designed to increase the knowledge and the understanding of the general public about the benefits and obligations of the accession process and ultimately the EU membership. It focuses on establishing a functional system for EU communication for decision and opinion makers in the public administration - “speaking in unified voice,” able to transmit EU related messages.
Implementing organisation: Secretariat for European Affairs