This paper addresses deficiencies in the legal and institutional frameworks in an area particularly prone to corruption – recruitment in local self-governments. The poor legal framework currently in place spoils the system and hampers merit-based recruitment.
The Law on Local Self-Government only partly regulates the legal status of local civil servants and employees, referring to analogous implementation of the rules and procedures in the law that regulates recruitment at the central level of state administration. However, many deficiencies have been seen in the analogous implementation of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees. The local sector employs around 20,000 people, but the law is applied in an analogous manner to only around 4,000 employees working directly for local self-government bodies. Another 16,000 local employees, working mostly in public companies and public institutions established or owned by municipalities, are subject solely to the loose rules prescribed by the Labour Law.
This policy brief has been prepared in the framework of the TRAIN Programme 2017 (Think Tanks Providing Research and Advice through Interaction and Networking), which is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office (Stability Pact for South East Europe) and implemented by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
