Reform of the public service legal framework in the Western Balkans at a time of economic crises

The objective of the paper is to examine the systemic legal changes in the area of public service introduced as a response to the economic crisis in the countries of the Western Balkans. Three different aspects of the reform are analysed: regulation of the legal status of a broad range of public sector employees, especially their salary levels; introduction of more flexible working arrangements in public administration and improving the efficiency in the recruitment and selection process. The author concludes that most of the countries have introduced modern legal frameworks in at least one of the analysed fields, which is an important step forward in the right direction. It, however, still remains to be seen how these new pieces of legislation will be implemented, especially bearing in mind a fairly large number of employees they cover. The paper especially raises attention to the case of blatant politicisation of the senior civil service in the Federation of BiH, which has been justified by the need to introduce more flexible working arrangements in the public administration. This example shows real difficulties in improving human resource management regulations and practices in the public administration at a time of economic crisis and strong external political pressures for partisan employment in the public sector. In this case, the crisis itself has proven to be an important reform obstacle, which should to be taken into account as an important risk in the process of planning future reform efforts during the times of economic and fiscal constraints