The Venice Commission organised the 15th UniDem Med Seminar entitled "Public service policies : paradigms for changes", in co-operation with the General Personnel Council of Palestine*. This seminar took place on 17-18 May 2022 in a hybrid format : online and face-to face in Ramallah, Palestine*.

More than 200 international experts and senior public officials from the Southern Mediterranean (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine* and Tunisia) attended the event. On the basis of presentations by international and regional experts, participants were invited to exchange views, on the first day, on new models of human resources management and innovative training policies aiming at creating attractive working conditions that respect the rights of public service officers. These experiences focused on the importance of investing in human capital, inclusiveness and quality of life at work. This first day was also an opportunity to examine how to modernise human resources management policies and more particularly training policies for better governance, greater efficiency and more diversity in civil service.

The second day of the seminar addressed major challenges facing the public administration and more particularly the civil service today, notably through the prism of new public management policies and their impact on performance evaluation and risk management. Another challenge that was discussed is the control of the wage bill and its impact on the quality of social dialogue. What are the innovations and trends on these issues in the South Mediterranean region and beyond?

This seminar was an opportunity to present the standards and work of the Council of Europe in these areas like to the toolkits prepared by the Centre of Expertise for Good governance and the European Social Charter (click here for more details).

For the first time, a session was dedicated to the follow-up of public administration reforms in UniDem Med’s partner countries on themes addressed during previous seminars. In this context, Morocco presented the "Gender Equality Institutionalisation Strategy in the Public Service: Challenges and Perspectives" which is in line with the themes of the 6th UniDem Med seminar on “the women and the labour market” and the 4th seminar on “Performance, merit and equality in the civil service”.

The UniDem Med seminars were established in September 2015, with the aim of modernising public administration in the region through the exchange of best democratic practices among senior civil servants from the two shores of the Mediterranean. The UniDem Med activities are co-financed by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the latter in the framework of the South Programme IV.
Unidem Med Project
List of UniDem Med seminars

* This designation shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of Council of Europe and European Union member States on this issue. 

The South Programme IV is a joint programme of the Council of Europe and the European Union, financed by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.