Serbia Judicial Functional Review - Workshop in Nis

On Friday 28 February 2014, the World Bank's Multi-Donor Trust Fund for Justice Sector Support (MDTF-JSS) hosted a workshop in Nis to discuss the Judicial Functional Review. The Judicial Functional Review, which has been requested by the EC and the Serbian authorities, aims to provide an objective and data-rich assessment of the current functioning of the Serbian judiciary. The Functional Review will provide a baseline to enable Serbia to assess the impact of future justice reform initiatives and, by outlining options and recommendations, it will inform the accession negotiations under Chapter 23. This process will start with the design of the Serbian authorities’ draft action plan on the judiciary as the opening benchmark for the negotiations under Chapter 23.

After discussing the aims, scope and focus of the Functional Review, the World Bank team provided an update on the process and methodology that's being used to analyze data for the Functional Review. Much of the workshop focused on discussing the draft Performance Framework, which identifies the following:

• key areas of measurement;
• indicators that demonstrate performance in those areas;
• specific data that will feed those indicators; and
• the sources of data that will be used.

1. Introduction and Objectivees of the Workshop
2. Performance Framework, part 1
3. Performance Framework, part 2

The team sought stakeholder feedback and views on the analytic framework and these will be considered as the work of the Functional Review progresses. Discussions also raised substantive issues that will be dealt with under the Functional Review. The World Bank team also invited participants to engage in individual interviews to further deepen the stakeholder input into the Functional Review. All this feedback will be essential to ensure that the Functional Review is accurate and comprehensive in capturing the whole picture in the most rich and objective way possible.