Current Projects

1. Integration of the Romanian workforce in Europe

A PHARE project, this partnership between SAR and the Alfa Trade Union Confederation aims to build an involvement strategy for the civil society with regard to the adoption of the aquis communautaire on the free movement of Romanian workers in Europe. The project looks at the legislative framework, the development of a social dialogue framework and also concrete recommendation for improving the legislation adressed to the main stakeholders.   

2. International Labour Migration - Gains and Costs

The MATRA project aims to contribute to the development of a better management of international labor migration in the Neamt county. The main activities consist in  designing policy recommendations based on the comprehensive diagnosis of the social and economic impact of this phenomenon, awareness campaign regarding the risks of irregular migration and the available legal opportunities, maximization of positive socio-economic gains. Also, the project aims to increase the awareness of local and county-level stakeholders with regard to the migration effect for a better design of their policies.    

3. Transparency of local authorities - Development of the Annual Report

The PHARE project will be implemented in partnership with the Federation of Romanian Local Authorities - FALR. Primarily, the project aims to help to improve the reporting capacity of the local authorities using the Activity report specified in the Law of Freedom of Information (544/2001). SAR will evaluate the reporting capacity of Romanian public administration so far and will develop a Reporting Methodology for every public institution.     

4. Policy Warning Reports (PWR), Romania

This program was initiated and mainly financed by UNDP in the first two years of its functioning, under the name of Early Warning Reports. After the termination of the contract SAR has assumed full responsibility for the publication of independent PWRs, aimed at providing the Romanian government with objective advice from independent sources. The goal of the program is to monitor the socio-political and economic developments in order to identify the situations with crisis potential. Our team of experts monitor and analyze on a permanent basis the developments in four main areas: Economy, Society, Politics and Rule of Law, and publish monthly bi-lingual reports, policy memos and annual overviews covering the preceding year.  Download PWR's >>>

5. Reforming Law and Order Agencies

Comparative study initiated by the Stanford University, the School of Law. The Romanian chapter is carried out by SAR and explores the institutional dimension of reforms in the rule of law areas, and the change of attitudes towards law enforcement among the wider public.

Past Projects

Integrating the Balkans into the European Union (IBEU)

Funded by EUROPEAN FIFTH FRAMEWORK and managed by the Hellenic Foundation (Eliamep) this project assembles research institutes from Britain, Italy, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. The focus is on borders in South Eastern Europe, explored from several perspectives: cross-border trade and migration, informal economies, smuggling and criminality, social capital. The work carried out by SAR focuses on rule of law, trust and honesty in Romania. SAR will also do the comparative analysis of the pooled Balkan sample of the social capital survey covering Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro.

 East European Cabinets

Replicates in East Europe a classical study by Jean Blondel regarding the European cabinets and decision making processes. SAR is the Romanian partner, conducting research on the Romanian Cabinet members. In cooperation with European University Institute and University of Lunenfeld.

Conditionality, Corruption and informal institutions

The project "Conditionality, Corruption and Informal Institutions: An analysis of Corruption in the Spheres of Public Procurement, Party Funding, Lobbying and the Judiciary in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania" is an idea of the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR) which is also the sponsor of the project. SAR is the NIBR partner for Romania. Using social network analysis, SAR will focus on the informal networks in Romania, networks operating in the spheres of: public procurement, lobby-ing, party funding and judiciary.

The Programmatic Adjustment Loan (PALs) for Romania is an instrument in line with the FY 02-04 Country Assistance Strategy prepared in May 2001. According to the CAS, private sector development initiatives relating to privatization, banking, business environment and energy pricing as well as social mitigation measures were to be advanced under PSAL 1 and PSAL 2. Following the PSALs the CAS envisaged initiation of a series of PALs that would focus on institutional and governance reforms and completion of the broader privatization agenda, including full transition to market-based mechanisms in, strengthen the social service provision, and advance reforms in crucial areas of governance and public administration - civil service, public budgeting, decision-making process, decentralization and judiciary.

Beginning with February 2003, SAR experts are working together with the World Bank Romania-PAL team in structuring the lending instruments and designing technical assistance for the last of the three components of PAL - reform of governance and public administration.

Transatlantic Workshop in Public Policy

Comprehensive program financed by the German Marshall Fund of the US, meant at developing SAR's capacity to assist the public institutions with independent expertise and establish permanent links with Western think tanks.

The research-oriented component, a policy training program for civil servants started with a seminar where three mixed team of independent experts were formed, to work on three policy areas: Decentralisation policies and regional development; The welfare state reform; environmental policies.The groups started by identifying a relevant policy problem in each area, drafted research plan and implemented it through a program of ten months of research and advocacy activity. The final results were presented to the policy makers and opinion leaders in a series of workshops. The networking component of the program enabled SAR to establish relationships with organizations such as: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: we participated in a workshop organized by the Global Transparency program of CEIP, which provided us with useful inputs in the FOIA advocacy in Romania, the Atlas Foundation: after the Bratislava seminar SAR became member in the regional network of institutions who promote the ideas of good governance and free market

Education Center for Executives in the Public Sector

Also a GMF-sponsored program run by SAR. The aim was to institutionalize our policy unit as a resource center through a series of seminars with executives from the public sector. Out of the four workshops provided, two were scheduled for 2001: the reform of the budgetary procedures and implementation of the program budgeting norms; and the implementation of the FOIA provisions, recently passed in Romania, in the central government agencies. Moreover, a newsletter presenting the most important events and changes in the area of public administration reforms is edited and distributed.

Local Government Reform

Program financed by the Fiscal Decentralization Initiative (FDI) of the World Bank, aiming at exploring the relation between local and central budgets. This is one of the key concerns of the Romanian Government, as presented in the EU Pre-accession Economic Program and the current Government Program. There are a great number of areas, which need a thorough analysis. Among them the most important are the connection between fiscal decentralization and the local administration reform, and the capacity building in local governments in order to make them able to cope with their new enhanced responsibilities. Eventually SAR will produce an assessment of the equalization grants system in Romania and a set of policy recommendations. The evaluation will be supplemented with a series of workshops, in co-operation with the Romanian Ministry of Public Administration, meant to provide training to local government officials in the areas of budgeting and handling public information. SAR has been co-operating on a steady basis with the Romanian Federation of Local Governments (FALR), assisting them with advice and expertize on legislative analysis, tax modelling and simulations, and budgetary reform proposals.