Western Balkans and Türkiye Lack Strong Accountability Systems Needed to Address Public Trust Challenges
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The Western Balkans and Türkiye have been marked by differing stages of democratic consolidation amid persistent concerns about executive dominance, but have made real progress on formal accountability practices like publishing key budget documents. Much of this can be attributed to reforms required by the EU accession process.
However, our results show gaps persist in terms of how much information or room for public scrutiny exists during budget execution. These accountability gaps leave room for significant executive discretion and weak public trust in how social spending, capital expenditure, public procurement, and fiscal risks are managed. They also raise public questions as to whether governments are compliant, but not yet credible in their reform agendas.
What is the Open Budget Survey?
Implemented globally for more than two decades, the Open Budget Survey (OBS) is a globally recognized benchmark for assessing government accountability in public finance. It measures accountability across three pillars:
Transparency
Is there timely, accessible, and comprehensive information about how government budgets are planned and spent?
Participation
Do civil society and the broader public (including historically excluded groups) have structured opportunities to engage at key moments and influence budget choices?
Oversight
Do the legislature and audit institutions have the authority and practices needed to review the budget and scrutinize how it is implemented?
Together, they determine whether constituencies and their representatives can see how public money is planned and spent, question decisions and deviations, and influence priorities before and during implementation. In this sense, the survey acts as a proxy for democratic credibility in public finance: it signals whether budget systems are open enough to support trust, contestation and corrective action.
The OBS 2025 Regional Analysis for Western Balkans and Türkiye
The State of National Budget Accountability in the Region
Countries in the Western Balkans and Türkiye have made real progress on formal accountability practices over the past decade. Governments are publishing more information, strengthening oversight practices and aligning fiscal frameworks with European Union standards — reflecting genuine reform commitment and growing institutional capacity.
Yet official reforms have not yet translated into greater public confidence.
According to the 2024 Balkan Barometer, only a third of people in this region trust their government or parliament.
The particularly low level of trust in parliaments underscores a central challenge: oversight institutions are perceived as weak, politicized or ineffective in holding the executive to account. This is not simply a perception problem—it is a signal worth taking seriously, and OBS 2025 findings help explain why it persists.
Opaque decision-making, weak checks and balances, and other challenges have not allowed broader accountability to take root. OBS 2025 finds that legislatures, auditors and the public cannot systematically influence budget choices, especially during execution.
Where accountability mechanisms fall short, suspicion fills the gap. Delays in project implementation, opaque reallocations or sudden spending cuts are not seen as neutral technical adjustments, but as signals of favoritism, mismanagement or corruption. In several countries in the region, high-profile failures of publicly financed projects have triggered waves of public discontent, initially focused on accountability for specific incidents, but quickly expanding into wider demands for transparency around project financing, procurement practices and oversight arrangements. These reactions reflect deeper public concerns that decisions involving significant public resources are often made behind closed doors, with weak oversight and few consequences when problems emerge.
Strengthening transparency, oversight and public engagement is therefore not just a technical exercise but critical for restoring public trust and solidifying reform commitments in the region.
Some governments have made progress in budgeting practices
The Open Budget Survey 2025 shows continued modest progress in strengthening accountable budgeting practices in the Western Balkans and Türkiye across recent survey rounds. While progress varies across countries, the regional average shows a gradual upward trend.
Transparency has improved for most countries in OBS 2025, but inconsistencies persist in some aspects
Governments have improved disclosure during key stages of budget preparation, including through pre-budget statements and medium-term fiscal frameworks, while also improving the coverage and quality of audit reports. The region also has higher levels of transparency in enacted budgets and year-end reporting on financial outcomes. At these stages, governments generally provide essential information – such as spending by ministry or sector and sources of revenue – that helps people understand overall priorities and how taxes are collected.
Most governments fall short in explaining changes made during budget execution
Even as governments across the region publish more budget information, they miss important opportunities to better inform and engage the public in their decision-making.
Most countries in the region publish Citizens Budgets intended to make budget information more accessible to the public. However, these documents often provide limited content, are not widely disseminated, and in some cases are released too late to meaningfully support public engagement with budget decisions.
Governments also provide less information as budgets get executed: how decisions are made during the year, why plans change, and whether money reaches the services people rely on, such as health care, schools, and roads. This creates a communications gap precisely when executive discretion is highest.
The OBS data illustrates this breakdown in the budget cycle.
Mid-Year Reviews are meant to show whether the budget is on track, update projections for the remainder of the year, and explain any adjustments made in response to changing conditions or new priorities.
In five out of seven countries assessed in OBS 2025, Mid-Year Reviews are not published at all. In Albania and Türkiye the mid-year budget reviews provide useful information on budget execution and updated fiscal projections. However, they offer limited explanations of the drivers of budget changes, only partial discussion of fiscal risks, and little analysis of how mid-year developments affect policy decisions or public services. Without clearer explanations of these changes, the reports provide limited support for citizens and oversight institutions to hold governments accountable for how budgets are managed during the year.
Fiscal risks are not disclosed in the budget process
Open budgeting practices matter not only for how public money is managed today, but for how governments will cope with harder decisions ahead. While many countries in the region have managed recent fiscal pressures reasonably well, future risks are growing.
IMF assessments point to elevated debt burdens across the region — debt levels around 63 percent of GDP in North Macedonia and projected to reach the mid-60s in Montenegro — likely forcing difficult choices about spending and public services.
These pressures make transparency around fiscal risks important, but OBS 2025 finds disclosure practices are weak. Many risks associated with State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) — companies governments own and may be forced to bail out — are not systematically included in budget documents. While several countries in the region publish fiscal risk statements or report on the fiscal risks and performance of SOEs, this information is often published separately, late in the budget cycle, or outside the core budget process, reducing its role in informing budget decisions and fiscal oversight. Only Serbia discloses all public transfers to SOEs as part of the budget proposal, and only Montenegro and Serbia account for government guarantees that could fall on the budget in the future.
Long-term fiscal sustainability is even less visible. No country provides ten-year projections in budget proposal documentation. Debt composition — critical for understanding exposure to interest rate or currency shocks — is disclosed by only three countries: North Macedonia, Serbia, and Kosovo. Without this information, parliaments and citizens cannot assess whether governments are quietly shifting costs and risks into the future.
Public Participation remains critically low in the region
Formal spaces for the public to inform budget choices are rare
Across the region, opportunities for public participation remain limited and uneven, often taking the form of pilots or sporadic efforts rather than routine practices grounded in law. Where participation does exist, it is largely confined to the early stages of budget preparation. No assessed country in the region has a formal mechanism that allows the public to provide input during budget implementation—when governments decide on reallocations, manage delays and respond to service delivery challenges. Legislatures and national audit institutions provide a similar number of participation opportunities, but those offered by audit institutions tend to be somewhat more inclusive. Legislative participation is often limited to formal public hearings with narrower opportunities for dialogue, and only Kosovo provides a participation mechanism that is inclusive of traditionally excluded communities. As a result, communities are largely left out of decisions that directly affect whether public funds translate into real outcomes.
Formal Oversight Capacity has improved, but marginally
Despite formal mandates, oversight is weak in practice
National audit offices and parliaments have mandates on paper but are weak in practice due to executive dominance, political polarization and other challenges. Auditors are technically capable, have solid legal mandates and regularly publish reports covering a large share of public expenditure. However, their oversight often stops at reporting.
Only Kosovo has a clear system for the executive government to track and report on the implementation of audit recommendations. North Macedonia and Montenegro report on some recommendations, while Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Türkiye lack systematic executive reporting altogether.
Parliaments and audit institutions have some degree of tracking what happens to audit findings, but some do not have the capacity or political wherewithal to systematically review audit reports or ensure that governments act on audit findings.
As a result, audit recommendations—often aimed at reducing corruption risks, improving spending efficiency or strengthening financial management—go unheeded. When audit findings don’t lead to visible action, oversight loses its deterrent effect and public confidence erodes.
Ways to Strengthen Budget Accountability in the Region
The opportunity ahead lies in closing the accountability gap. Governments in the region that explain decisions openly, ensure oversight leads to real consequences, and create genuine opportunities for public engagement will strengthen their reform credentials on the road to EU accession. They will also build the kind of public trust that makes difficult decisions on spending, investment and fiscal sustainability easier to navigate. IBP recommends the following actions:
Transparency
OBJECTIVE
To make accountability visible during budget execution
RECOMMENDATIONS
Executive governments should publish Mid-Year Reviews that explain why spending plans have changed, not just updated budget estimates. Reports should include updated forecasts of macroeconomic conditions and assumptions, explanations of deviations and discussion of emerging risks. Governments should also increase the availability of Citizens Budgets across the budget cycle to make information more accessible for public feedback.
Executive governments should explain how changes in budget implementation will impact services people care about—such as health, education and infrastructure—and what the government plans to do to ensure essential services can still be accessed by communities.
Finance ministries should develop public engagement mechanisms for public input into budget implementation so that communities can raise questions and give feedback on whether they are receiving government services as planned.
GOOD PRACTICES
On budget execution
One emerging good practice on budget execution comes from both governments and civil society using interactive online portals to make spending data easier to understand. In North Macedonia, the government’s Open Finance portal allows users to access public spending data throughout the year, showing how money flows to ministries, programs, suppliers and local governments. The portal updates twice a month and allows users to download the information in open formats. In other countries, civil society organizations are expanding public access to information by translating complex government data into accessible web-based tools. In Montenegro, the Institute Alternative’s Moj Novac portal presents budget execution data through clear visuals that make government spending easier to follow. Similarly, in Kosovo, the GAP Institute’s How Does the State Spend Our Money? platform allows users to explore budget appropriations and expenditures across institutions, helping people see how plans compare to real spending. Together, these examples show how better presentation of execution data can make budgets more transparent, usable and relevant to everyday concerns.
Participation
OBJECTIVE
To open spaces for public input and influence over key budget decisions
RECOMMENDATIONS
Governments should embed participation mechanisms as a regular practice throughout the annual budget cycle, including in law or regulation, rather than relying on pilots or ad-hoc initiatives.
Governments should link participation engagements to concrete decisions that they make on fiscal policies and budgets, such as setting spending priorities, reviewing implementation challenges or selecting audit topics.
Governments and oversight institutions should ensure public engagement opportunities specifically invite the participation of diverse communities, such as ethnic minorities, women and people with disabilities, to ensure budget execution reflects their different needs.
Governments should close the feedback loop with the public by explaining how public input was used and why certain suggestions were accepted or rejected.
GOOD PRACTICES
On public engagement
Kosovo has bolstered public participation during budget formulation through a legally mandated, bottom-up process that links municipal consultations to national budget planning. Under the Law on Public Financial Management and through the national budget calendar, municipalities are required to hold public budget hearings and consultations before submitting approved budget proposals to the Ministry of Finance, Labor and Transfers. Municipalities are mandated to publish consultation notices, hearing calendars, minutes and summaries of public inputs on the national e-consultation platform and municipal channels. People may also submit inputs directly through the national e-platform. While outreach to specific groups is not legally required, some municipalities organize dedicated hearings to engage women, youth, non-majority communities and persons with disabilities, and some are beginning to apply participatory and gender-responsive budgeting approaches. Although the depth of the hearings can vary, Kosovo’s framework shows how public participation can be formally structured, documented, and connected to the budget formulation process through law and intentional budget procedures.
Oversight
OBJECTIVE
To ensure oversight leads to action
RECOMMENDATIONS
Executive governments should publish clear reports to track actions taken to respond to all audit recommendations.
Parliaments should hold follow-up hearings on audit findings and publicly track government responses to audits. Connecting auditors, legislatures and the public can turn audit reports into real accountability.
Audit institutions should expand public engagement to invite input into audit programs and, where relevant, input into audit investigations.
GOOD PRACTICES
On legislative oversight of audits
Montenegro stands out as one of the few cases where a legislative committee examines audit reports promptly and publishes its conclusions. The institutional link between auditors and legislators reinforces credibility and signals that findings matter. While not yet comprehensive, such practices show how oversight can move from formality to consequence.
On public input into audit plans
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the audit institution maintains a formal mechanism for the public to propose audit topics. In North Macedonia, the audit institution not only invites input but reports back on how the public’s suggestions influence its planned audit program. While still limited, these practices demonstrate how participation— when linked to effective follow-up on audit findings—can reinforce confidence that public institutions are listening and acting in the public interest.
Civic Engagement in the Budget Process
Civic groups in the Western Balkans and Türkiye are increasingly leveraging what budget information is available to engage and advocate for issues that matter to communities and for ensuring that, despite hard tradeoffs, people’s priorities in public spending are reflected in the budget process. These efforts show the potential of open budgeting practices—when people can influence public money decisions, governments can bolster public trust in how resources are managed.
A civil society group’s budget analysis and advocacy helped increase health sector funding
- Albania
Together for Life has analyzed and tracked the country’s health sector budget—both allocations and actual expenditures—for several years to assess whether it is responsive to patient needs and bring attention to Albania’s relatively low health sector spending compared to regional peers. Thanks to their advocacy, the budget for the health sector increased from 2.9% of GDP in 2024 to 3.2% of GDP today. They successfully advocated the Ministry of Health to increase the budget for mental health services in hospitals and community centers. They were also able to work with patient rights advocates, the Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination and other stakeholders to advocate for the inclusion of hearing aids for children in the health budget—underscoring the important role that civic groups can play in ensuring that budgets are responsive to the needs of constituencies that are under-represented in policy debates.
A research and policymaking centre monitored whether public funds address women’s needs
- North Macedonia
The Center for Research and Policymaking is leveraging gender-responsive budgeting to monitor whether public funds at the national and local level are raised and spent to meet the distinct needs of women in North Macedonia. Through the Gender Budget Watchdog Network, they also facilitate efforts to integrate gender-responsive budgeting across the region. A recent key milestone—their successful advocacy to lower the Value-Added Tax (VAT) on feminine hygiene products— illustrates how public engagement can lead to fairer policymaking.
A policy research foundation is bringing attention to underinvestment in the education sector
- Türkiye
The Economic Policy Research Foundation of Türkiye (TEPAV) is bringing attention to underinvestment in Türkiye’s education sector. They have tracked and flagged Türkiye’s declining education budget (from 20% to 14% of total budget in the past decade)—despite increased population growth and refugee inflows—and exposed regional inequalities, low girls’ participation rates, limited preschool access, and other challenges. They are leveraging their unique role as a bridge between government and civil society to expand the space for greater public participation in setting public education priorities and budgets.
Civic groups are advocating for greater accountability reforms
- Serbia
Groups like Transparency International Serbia are advocating for greater accountability reforms. They coordinate a growing domestic network of civil society organizations working on public finance issues—from procurement monitoring to oversight of State-Owned Enterprises. Together with groups like EU Konvent, they are advocating for the government to adhere to competitive procurement processes on major infrastructure projects like Belgrade EXPO 2027.
Open Budget Survey Partners
Institute of Public and Private Policies (IP3)
Fondacija “Centar za zastupanje građanskih interesa” (“Public Interest Advocacy Center”)
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Nermin Kujovic
Sally Torbert
Lilianna Ziedins
David Robins
Cynthia Romero
Laura Castillo Cabral
Rajan Zaveri
