Abstract:

The changes introduced by the New Public Management brought new concepts in the approach to public administration, namely the transparency of the communication between government officials and their citizens, in order to involve society and increase trust in public institutions. The European Union (EU) has embraced the key principles of this reform, namely increasing the effectiveness of public management and the accountability of government officials, through greater openness and transparency in the design and results of its public policies. Transparency thus becomes a demand of society and a fundamental condition for citizen centered communication from government officials. This issue is particularly important at the local level, where there is a great deal of proximity between government officials and citizens, and where there is usually a perception of high levels of corruption. This paper is the result of ongoing research and aims to identify the tools for measuring municipal transparency in EU Member States. To achieve this objective, we adopted a qualitative approach, based on an exploratory and descriptive study focused on the comparative analysis of the transparency assessment indices of the EU Member States that have representation of Transparency International (TI). The analysis developed shows that there is no common index for assessing the transparency of local governments across the EU.