Representatives of GEA had the opportunity to present the findings of a recently completed study on the budget transparency of local self-government units in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The research was conducted in 2024 as part of the LENS project – Strengthening the Capacity of Civil Society Organisations for Monitoring Public Budgets – funded by the European Union and implemented by the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIN), Futura, and GEA. It covered all 143 local self-government units in BiH (79 in the Federation of BiH and 64 in Republika Srpska).

The purpose of the research was to determine whether public administration bodies at the local level in BiH publish all relevant budget-related information and documents in a complete, timely, and systematically organized manner. Additionally, the study sought to assess the degree of openness of the budget process at the local self-government level and develop a methodology for comparative analysis and classification of budget transparency levels across all local self-government units.

For the research, a multidisciplinary team from the Center for Research and Studies GEA was assembled, and a methodological framework was developed, consisting of 21 research questions. These questions focused on three main areas:

• Public availability of budget documents (13 questions),
• Opportunities for public participation in the budget process (4 questions),
• Other aspects of transparency in public administration impacting budget transparency (4 questions).

Based on the availability of this data, municipalities and cities in BiH could achieve a maximum of 75 points. However, the average score recorded during the study across all observed local self-government units was 32.81, significantly below 50% on the success scale.

You can download the complete research results via the following link