The Principles of Public Administration

The Principles of Public Administration are a comprehensive framework of standards expressing values and behaviours that citizens and businesses expect from a modern public administration. They were designed to guide the European Union (EU) enlargement and neighbourhood administrations in their reform efforts to address the shortcomings in their public administrations and meet the EU requirements on one of the “fundamentals” of the accession process.

The EU and the OECD recognise that good public governance is a crucial factor to achieve sustainable development, economic growth, competitiveness and better quality of life, as well as to address key challenges in society both today and in the future.

Politicians and public servants from transition countries can use this framework as a tool for continuous improvement of public administration systems and as a guide to develop better policies for better lives, provide high-quality and user-centred services, manage public funds efficiently, foster transparency and accountability and build citizens’ trust in public institutions.  

The Principles were developed by SIGMA at the request of the European Commission (EC). The first edition was published in 2014. This revised edition updates the framework in line with the most recent standards and practices in the EU, OECD and other international organisations. Public administrations today are expected to be more digital, open and transparent, agile, innovative and green than in 2014. They must also show greater resilience to external shocks, such as pandemics.

This new version unifies the Principles for the EU enlargement and neighbourhood regions and the scope now extends beyond central government to include regional and local levels of government, with the aim of fostering a coherent policy approach.

The structure of the 2023 edition of the Principles of Public Administration still follows the six thematic areas set out in the 2014 Enlargement Strategy:

The 32 Principles outline values, behaviours and outcomes, while the 270 sub‑principles provide more detailed guidance on how to achieve these results and ensure adequate administrative capacity.

A monitoring framework complements the Principles and sub-principles by defining criteria and performance benchmarks, assigning weights to the criteria and establishing corresponding indicators and sub-indicators to measure the actual implementation of reforms (how the administration performs in practice) and subsequent outcomes and impacts (how its performance impacts society).

SIGMA developed Principles for EU candidate countries and potential candidates and more generic Principles suited for a wider range of countries, including those working with the EU under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).