Balkan Tender Watch (2018-2022)

The project aims at increasing Western Balkans (WB) civil society impact on anti-corruption policies and practices during the public procurement (PP) cycle by utilizing the EU integration as a transformative agenda. There are four major target groups addressed by the action in order to achieve set goals in all participating countries: 1) civil society organizations, media and journalists; 2) national governments and public bodies; 3) business sector; 4) the EU institutions participating in the enlargement process.

Project’s specific objectives are: Boosting anti-corruption community (CSOs including grassroots, media) in the WB to scale-up evidence-based advocacy, watchdog and policy monitoring initiatives in public procurements; Influencing WB governments to introduce reforms aimed at establishing accountable PP systems aligned with the EU rules and building alliances with public authorities willing to engage in reforms; Providing comprehensive and timely information on state of affairs in PP related to the EU integration in chapters 5, 8 and 23 thus improving outreach to grassroots and other types of CSOs working on bringing about positive change at the local level.

The action is expected to provide following results:

-          Benchmarking tool to identify corruption vulnerable spots in public procurement systems produced, implemented and widely used by CSOs, media and other stakeholders

-          Five WB public procurement systems ranked and progress measured based on the benchmarking methodology

-          Annual evidence-based shadow reports on the state of affairs and progress made in the public procurement in five WB countries produced and disseminated At least 50 CSOs from five countries actively monitor public procurements, identify problems and propose solutions

-          Governments and other stakeholders provided with in-depth assessment of corruption vulnerable spots in PP systems and recommendations to overcome identified problems.

The project is founded by the European Union under Consolidating Regional Thematic Networks of Civil Society Organizations Programme, under the contract No. IPA/2017/393-763.

The lead implementing organization of the project is Fund for an Open Society, Serbia, and the partners of the project are: Open Society Fund, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, Center for Civil Communications, Macedonia and The Network for Affirmation of the NGO Sector – MANS, Montenegro.