In the framework of the Green Budgeting project for EU regions and Greece at central level, Expertise France is recruiting a local expert specialized in Public Financial Management, Environmental Economics and Green Budgeting. We are looking for an international expert to provide technical support to the following beneficiary authority:

·       Greece (EL), Ministry of Economy and Finance

The Expert will provide technical assistance for improvement of tagging methodologies and introduction of SDG tagging, and other green reforms. The Expert will collaborate with focal points from EL’s ministries of finance and environment, and relevant institutions, along with Expertise France´s Project Management team, and partners from the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) of the European Commission.

The Expert will support the civil servants from the ministries of finance, and environment, in the following outputs and activities:

Output 1: Inception Report

Activities:

·       Contribute to the preparation and implementation of a round of meetings with the beneficiary authority to understand better their needs and the current situation, to discuss the approach for each task and the action plan, and to collect the information necessary for the next steps. The beneficiary authority is requested to provide background documentation on budgetary procedures, national climate, environmental, and a concise report of their specific expectations from the project at technical and political level. Additional documentation might be requested by the expert.

·       Perform an initial analysis of the background documents provided by the beneficiary authority

·       Drafting of the inception report. The inception report shall take stock of the current situation, adjust or confirm the approach for each activity and overall action plan, and collect the information necessary for the next steps

Output 2: A technical report, including AS-IS, GAP and TO BE analyses.

The aim of the reports is to provide an accurate and thorough analysis of the current policy, regulatory, governance and institutional framework of the budgetary governance systems of EL, and recommendations to improve Green Budgeting tagging and introduce SDG tagging, and other green reforms, including green bonds. This report shall inform the later stages of the project, particularly in terms of further defining the scope for the plans for introducing SDG tagging methodology.

The report shall include identification and review of relevant public policy, legislation that defines green budgeting practices, mapping of relevant central ministries and agencies at the state level that carry out this decision-making and their mandates/involvement, identification of key stakeholders, existing processes and state of play, underlying information system and technical architecture supporting the processes (if existing). The report shall include an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) in the relevant public policy.

Activities:

·       Analysis of EL´s budgetary structure, national plans for SDGs targets, green bonds, and review of Greece´s green budgeting methodology

·       Meetings with the focal points of EL´s ministries of finance and environment to agree on key topics to focus the foreseen peer exchanges phase of the project, in addition to agree on concrete baselines and targets.

·       Drafting of the AS-IS, GAP and TO BE technical report

·       Presentation of the report findings, including key differences between the AS-IS and the TO-BE situations (i.e. the gap analysis)

Output 6: Recommendations report based on key insights shared by peers from other EU Member States during the civil servants´ exchange programme

Activities

·       Contribute to identifying relevant regions to exchange knowledge and best practices with and to the development of the content of the program for the exchanges

·       Accompany the civil servants in the exchanges and gather insights to produce the recommendations report

Output 7: Final conference and summary report of the conference including the agenda, the presentations, the list of participants and the main conclusions drawn. The objective of the closing conference shall be to present the results of the project to different stakeholders, such as representatives of other MSs ministries of Finance, the European Commission (DG REFORM, and other services) and other stakeholders.

·       Contribute to the preparation, implementation and reporting of the conference

Output 8:  Final report. A final report with one separate chapter per beneficiary authority will be produced summarizing lessons learned and assessing the beneficiary authorities´ progress towards achieving Green Budgeting practices at regional and central level.

·       Contribute to the drafting of the final report

Time frame and work plan

Note: the precise dates for the activities will be agreed between the selected Expert and the project team.