IMPEL NPRI Project with North Macedonia and Serbia

IMPEL’s National Peer Review Initiative (NPRI) lays the foundation for the development of autonomous peer review activities in national networks of environmental authorities and agencies. The NPRI approach can be used as a flexible tool to improve one's own performance through dialogue, joint confrontation and exchange of good practices between peers belonging to the same network or to a group of stakeholders dealing with the same issues. It is a powerful tool that supports the implementation of the EU ECA initiative, mainly through its potential to implement good and best practices and homogenisation.

The community of countries that participates in IMPEL’s National Peer Review Initiative (NPRI) is growing fast. Currently, Portugal, Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Italy are actively participating in the initiative by concretely implementing an NPRI. Several other countries are participating in project group meetings online or back-to-back with NPRI meetings in different countries and are considering implementing NPRI in their countries. Enthusiasm is high and the importance of the initiative to the countries and their organisations is recognised. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, since July 2022 several meetings have been held in countries to discuss the design of an NPRI or to review the progress of an ongoing NPRI. 

From 8 to 11 May, a joint meeting of high-level representatives of inspectorates from North Macedonia and Serbia was held in Skopje. Both countries decided to conduct a joint NPRI, mainly motivated by the fact that both countries are EU candidates and are preparing to meet EU requirements. As a result of the joint meeting, the Inspectorates of North Macedonia and Serbia decided to focus the NPRI on developing an approach to prioritising key national and international environmental laws and regulations, which will support the deployment and use of their resources and capacity for law enforcement in the most efficient and effective manner.