EU concerned over several provisions of the new Kosovo Law on Public Officials

To help Kosovo advance on its EU integration path in this reform area, the EU in cooperation with the OECD/SIGMA team of experts, has provided comments on several occasions on the draft law on public officials and draft law on salaries. The comments were intended to best guide and support the government to ensure a depoliticised and professional civil service, with a transparent merit based remuneration system, in line with public administration reform principles and the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) between the EU and Kosovo.

The EU regrets that the Kosovo Assembly has today adopted these two laws without taking into consideration the EU and OECD/SIGMA comments, despite the SAA commitments in this area. The new law on public officials is problematic with regard to ensuring a merit-based civil service that can effectively manage human resources, as it adds excessive discretion in the recruitment, transfer and disciplinary procedures of civil servants, potentially making the civil service vulnerable to politicisation.

The EU will continue to monitor developments affecting the public administration reform in Kosovo, will report on these issues in its annual Kosovo reports and may reassess its assistance in this area.