European Administrative Space as a New European Challenge for Public Administration Reform

The European Administrative Space (EAS) should be understood as the ‘environment in which the national administrations are called upon to assure homogeneous levels of service efficiency and quality'. It is important to learn from historical background in order to study the trends of the future organization and challenges of public service. The need for cooperation and benchmarking is rapidly increasing and is related to the need to control the globalizing economy. This new and complex situation almost leads to a crisis of the state, as countries seem incapable of ruling within their own territories. This new situation can only be addressed through international cooperation, supranational organizations and networking of the public sector. But these new tendencies may end up by questioning the power of the state. In Europe in particular interaction has increased considerably, based partly on the unification process. The new approach developed after 2000, triggered formally by the United Nation's (UN) Millennium Declaration, has tended to institutionalize and foster cooperation and strengthen public services in each country. In Europe and specifically in Balkan region, Public Administration has experienced this new trend as well, but it still faces challenges. In future, the EU will turn to positive common policies leading to administrative homogenization. In order to be effective this can only happen if common objectives and performance measures are set, not through an effort to adopt one common model for all Member States.