Support municipalities to access resources to enable discretionary and democratic decision taking on development priorities and quality of service provision.

Outcome 1: The central government introduces a set of laws leading to municipal finance reforms and implements a merit based system for local civil servants, thereby assuring quality work in local administrations;

Outcome 2: Regional and rural development policies of Serbia meet criteria to access EU funding timely. They are owned by Serbian local and central level stakeholders and inspired by good European examples. Practices applied successfully in Switzerland and Poland will be taken into account.

Outcome 3: Improved public finance management allows for higher allocation of municipal finances, thus enabling municipalities to fulfil their mandate. Internal and external of high quality audits of municipal finances an incentive to advance in municipal resource management and increase the legitimacy of municipalities.

In the first component (Outcome 1) SDC will make requested expertise available to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self Government with the aim of supporting legislative changes favourable for municipalities. In the second component (Outcome 2) a multi-stakeholder platform will be launched to support regional and rural development initiatives and policy-making. The professionally facilitated platform, besides relying on relevant Swiss and Polish experience, shall debate on area-based priorities. The example of Poland is exceptionally reputed as the country was able to make best use of EU structural funds for rural and regional development. SDC will also support municipal capacity development for disaster risk reduction. In the third component (Outcome 3) SDC will provide a contribution to the on-going program of UNDP to expand the scope and diversity of activities with the State Auditor, to strengthen the capacities for internal municipal audits and to promote the dissemination of good practices in public finance management.

Phase 1 01.09.2014 - 31.12.2020   (Completed)