Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European Affairs Bojan Maricik today participated on the "Skopje Economic and Financial Forum", a panel dedicated to "New Challenges for Good Governance", where he noted that a new Strategy for Public Administration Reform 2023 - 2030 is being prepared, which aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of institutions.

- Public administration reform is a key area of the Foundations Cluster and for the first time it formally becomes part of the negotiation process. As a candidate country for EU membership, and given the importance of the rule of law and in the context of accession negotiations (as part of the Foundations Cluster), significant efforts have been made in the recent period to improve the legal, strategic and institutional framework, said Maricik.

The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that without good governance there is no economic success, adding that it is a key basis for our European values and is interrelated and closely related to democracy and basic human rights.

- Countries with functional and effective rule of law mechanisms are more attractive for foreign direct investment. In addition to NATO membership, foreign investors are looking for "countries safe for investments", where the key requirement is what rule of law mechanism exists in a given country. In that regard, the independence and impartiality of the judicial system and the level of corruption is one of the key requirements, Maricik said at the panel discussion.

Deputy Prime Minister Maricik spoke about transparency and accountability, noting that this government has shown a high level of political will to open institutions, citing the report by Metamorphosis according to which our country is the first in the Western Balkans, meeting 83.4% of the criteria. He also referred to the report on Active Transparency Index 2021 of the Centre for Civil Communications, according to which the active transparency of ministries, government and municipalities is 63 percent, which is five percent higher compared to 2020.

- We are establishing rules and standards in order for transparency to no longer depend on political will, but to be set as a practice that is mandatory for every institution, Maricik said.