Insitutitonal capacities for implementing The Posting of Workers Directive in the Western Balkans: A NEEDS ASSESMENT, August 2019

The needs assessment provides a review of the capacities of the four candidate countries of the Western Balkans, namely Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, to implement the Posting of Workers Directive (96/71/EC).

The needs assessment is done through the incremental approach of identifying existing capacities in all four countries and making best use of them for moving forward in achieving the developmental goal. The capacities are assessed in the context of the policy process cycle and in terms of six interdependent institutional capacity domains: legal framework, institutional arrangement, inter-agency cooperation, human resources, stakeholder engagement, and public governance. The needs assessment is based on the four country reports prepared by country teams in Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia during the period April to September 2018. The empirical data was collected through the review of the existing academic and grey literature on migration and labour mobility, the review of each country’s legislative and institutional framework, as well as by 44 semi-structured interviews with representatives of policymakers, implementing and enforcement state agencies, social partners and other relevant experts. The findings indicate that the Directive has been only partially transposed in each of the four countries and the existing legislation does not include all the elements of the Directive and the Enforcement Directive, while other relevant measures such as bilateral agreements on social security coordination and health care are also incomplete.

This raport is prepared by EMA researcher Mimoza Agolli, in the frame of the project ‘Posting of Workers in Eastern Europe’ (EEPOW) implemented by European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Austria, Vienna (for more information on the project: https://www.euro.centre.org/projects/detail/1673) This publication has received financial support from the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation “EaSI” (2014-2020).

Insitutitonal capacities for implementing The Posting of Workers Directive in the Western Balkans: A NEEDS ASSESMENT