The Regional meeting for the development of External evaluation of institutions – Best practices from the European Union (EU) and South Eastern Europe (Best practices), organized within the EQET SEE project, took place on 28^th and 29^th March 2023 in Belgrade, Serbia.

The meeting gathered Regional Working Group for development of Best practices comprising of nominated experts from the field and EQET SEE national coordination points (NCPs) from seven economies from the South Eastern Europe region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Moldova and Serbia, representatives of the ERI SEE Secretariat: Ms Tina Šarić, EQET SEE Project Manager and Ms Milica Grahovac, Sector Project Coordinator, Mr Mounir Baati from the European Training Foundation (ETF) and external expert in the field of quality assurance, Mr Herman Franssen, from the Netherlands.

The overall goal of development of the Best practices is to improve the process of external evaluation in the region through peer learning and to encourage reflection, innovation and peer exchange. Specific goals of the document are to present the best practices from the EU and SEE in key segments of external evaluation process, along the accompanying tools (such as checklists, forms, templates) and to allow for integration of these practices and tools into the national systems. This document will also serve as the tool supporting the policy vision document and the regional standard of competences for external evaluators, elaborated within the EQET SEE project.

At the beginning of the meeting, Ms Tina Šarić presented the approach to the joint work on development of the Best practices, which was followed by the presentation of the proposal for document structure, given by Ms Milica Grahovac, and presentation of sample chapters, delivered by Mr Herman Franssen.

The delegations from seven economies proposed good practices from their economies that they believe should be included per specific steps of external evaluation process, along their needs for process improvement, which served as the basis for the needs analysis and agreement on requests for input for further development and fine-tuning of the document stucture. During the meeting, the structure of sub-chapters was also discussed and agreed. The meeting was concluded with the division of chapters and agreement on best practices from the economies of the SEE region and the EU to be included in the document. The work on the regional Best practices will be continued in the next regional meeting of the Working Group, to take place in May 2023.

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with UNCSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.