The Association Agreement between the EU and Morocco entered into force in 2000. Since 2008, Morocco has had an "advanced status" partnership with the EU. A joint declaration of the EU and Morocco was signed in 2019. At the same time, Morocco is one of the first countries to benefit from an OECD Country Programme.
In agreement with the EC and the Moroccan authorities, SIGMA is currently co-operating with:
- The Ministry of Investments, Convergence and Evaluation of Public Policies (MICEPP) on improving their capacities around strategic planning (quality of government strategies).
- The MICEPP and several other institutions on enhancing professionalism and the quality of evaluation of public policies,
- The General Secretariat of the Government (Secrétariat Général du Gouvernement) on improving access to legislation and on implementing regulatory impact assessments.
Previously, SIGMA also assisted Morocco in the areas of governance, public administration reform, and legislative modernisation. This included support for:
- Enhancing the regulatory impact assessment system with comparative studies, improved methodologies, roadmaps, workshops, and pilot exercises, boosting institutional capacity for regulatory analysis.
- Free online access to legislation, digitising the Bulletin Officiel, setting XML standards, conducting OCR studies, facilitating knowledge sharing, and aiding system design for legislative consolidation.
- Strengthened policy evaluation through methodological support, workshops, and guidance with MICEPP, SCG, IGF, and other bodies.
- Modernisation of the recruitment, restructuring senior civil service, and introducing performance-based practices, along with notes, workshops, and developing digital recruitment platform terms of reference.
- Strategic planning tools, examples, checklists, and a White Paper to help improve government strategy coherence and quality.
- Enhanced parliamentary budget oversight with comparative analyses, models, and a roadmap for improved scrutiny.
- The MEF with the DataLab project, including workshops and international exposure, supporting digital transformation efforts.
- An assessment of the service delivery area in Morocco against the Principles of Public Administration. SIGMA issued a number of recommendations and continues to support their implementation.
The main beneficiaries included the Secrétariat Général du Gouvernement, Services du Chef du gouvernement, le ministère de l'Économie et des Finances, the MICEPP, the Inspection Générale des finances, the Parliament (especially the Chambre des Conseillers), and other public sector entities.
