How to ensure fiscal decentralisation? What role can the political actors and civil society play in it? A Peer Review Visit is addressing these questions to develop fiscal decentralisation and improve financial management in Bulgarian municipalities.
Since 1991 Bulgaria has been undergoing a process of decentralisation. The 2016 – 2025 Decentralisation strategy is currently being implemented. Several challenges remain, a Peer Review Process and was organised by the Centre of Expertise for Good Governance (CEGG) to share insights and good practice from Council of Europe member States. The Peer Review Team is composed high-level officials representing the respective Ministry responsible for local financing from Armenia, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal, with international experts from Italy and Romania.
Following the visit and based on the Peer Review Report, policy advice documents on financial equalisation and fiscal autonomy will be produced and provided to the Bulgarian Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works and the Ministry of Finance. The policy advice will offer recommendations on how to improve the legal, financial, and strategic framework for fiscal decentralisation and increase the level of own revenues of municipalities and will support Bulgaria to better complies with all the articles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
During the visit, in addition to meetings with the relevant Ministries; the Peer Review team paid a visit to Samokov Municipality; met with the National Association of Municipalities in Republic of Bulgaria and the Foundation for Local Government Reform; and participated in a roundtable discussion organised by the Citizen Participation Forum.
To ensure the effective participation of all stakeholders in political decision-making, the CEGG supported the organisation of a public consultation of relevant civil society stakeholders. The fruits of this discussion were presented to the Peer Review team and will be appended to the final report.
Participants to the roundtable discussed stressed that “civil participation should be the centre of decentralisation”: it is important to make national and municipalities budgets not only accessible, but also understandable to the citizens to ensure transparency and accountability, in line with the highest standards of public ethics and integrity in the exercise of power and public responsibilities (one of the four fundamentals of good democratic governance as defined by the CoE Committee of Ministers recommendation CM/Rec(2023)5 on the principles of Good Governance).
The Peer Review Process was organised as part of the project ‘22BG07 – Developing fiscal decentralisation and improving local financial management in Bulgaria’, a joint project financed by the European Union through the Technical Support Instrument (DG Reform) and implemented by the Centre of Expertise for Good Governance of the Council of Europe.
