Functional Review of the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning

The above-mentioned mandate requires revising since in 2009, following a government decision, No.
04/63 the Kosovo Cadastral Agency (KCA) was removed from the newly transformed Ministry of Public
Administration (MPA) and transferred under the responsibility of MESP.
A more detailed description of the functions stemming from the MESP mandate is provided in Section III
where the MESP policy areas (environment, spatial planning and construction) are reviewed in greater
detail.
The FRIDOM team’s conclusion is the MESP has a proper mandate that defines its respective
competencies, portfolio and functions. These are established by law and reflect in general fairly
reasonably the responsibilities expected. Some difficulties appear through an identified gap between the
legally defined functions, i.e. administrative work to be executed - and the functions actually discharged,
e.g.:
Cooperation among the line ministries, especially ministries tackling environmental issues
institutionalized through the ad-hoc working groups to solve particular agenda. However the Advisory
Board for Protection of Environment in Government - an official decision-facilitating inter-ministerial body
– is not approved yet by the Assembly of Republic of Kosovo (despite the provision of the actual Law on
Environment Protection).
Fund for environmental protection (so called Eko Fund), mostly a financial instrument for improving the
environmental infrastructure country-wide, is not yet operational despite it is stated in the Law on
Environmental Protection.
Inspectorate for Environment and Water where is a very low number of genuinely professional
environmental inspectors.
An absence of respective legislation, applicable working methodology, relevant environmental standards
and no proper co-ordination of activities including enforcement processes.
Modern enforcement concepts and standards, although envisaged by the promulgated primary
legislation, are not yet in use.
I.2. Cross-country comparison of the MESP organization
An overview of MoEnv/MESP administrative structure in selected EU reference countries is provided in
Annex 2. The main conclusions from analysis of the various organigrams are the following:
a combination of environment and spatial planning is usual in European practice as the similar
portfolios exist in some of the reference countries such as the Ministry of Environment and Spatial
Planning in Slovenia and Lithuania;
in Finland the environment portfolio is combined with the portfolio of housing;
it is also quite common to establish standalone environment portfolios as in the case of Latvia and
Slovakia;
the portfolio of environment ministry in Estonia and Lithuania also includes forestry.
The size of MESP in Kosovo is relatively small in comparison to the reference EU countries. Slovenia has
5.2 times, Lithuania 3.6 times and Finland even 8.7 times more professional staff at the MESP and regulated
institutions than Kosovo. Part of this difference in size might be explained through variance of ministries of
environment portfolios, a big portion of the difference though points out that some of the mandates of MESP
are still underdeveloped. A good example of such mandates might be the waste water management, transfer
of clean technologies and environmental inspection.
Weak distinction is made between core (policy, regulatory, executive and service delivery to clients) and
supportive functions of MESP when it comes to staffing. The number of employees performing the core
functions of the Ministry (218) seems to be small in comparison to those providing support for them (63).
Also the salary grades do not sufficiently take into account the staff qualification requirements.
10