Regional umbrella network connecting EU research to local governments and municipalities across South-East Europe.
NALAS is the Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South-East Europe — a regional umbrella body that represents national municipal associations across the Western Balkans and SEE countries. Their core work is building capacity in local governments: helping municipalities understand and implement policy, manage finances, and navigate governance reforms. In EU research projects, they serve as the bridge between academic findings and real-world municipal adoption, contributing their unique access to elected officials and local administrators across a politically complex and underserved region. They are not a research institute — they are a policy conduit that ensures research reaches the local governments that need to act on it.
Both EmBuild and LoGov relied on NALAS as the connector to municipal authorities across SEE, covering topics from energy action plans to local democracy and intergovernmental relations.
EmBuild (2016-2018) engaged NALAS to help municipalities develop long-term investment strategies for energy renovation of public buildings in line with the Energy Efficiency Directive.
LoGov (2019-2024) drew on NALAS expertise in local responsibilities, local finances, and best-fit governance practices for the changing urban-rural interplay in SEE.
In the 2016-2018 period, NALAS was engaged primarily on the operational side of municipal governance — specifically how local authorities plan and fund energy renovation of public buildings, create local energy action plans, and comply with the Energy Efficiency Directive. The work was practical and sector-specific: getting municipalities to move on buildings. By 2019-2024, the focus had shifted to the structural conditions that enable or constrain local government effectiveness: law and policies, intergovernmental relations, local democracy, urban-rural differences, and fiscal autonomy. This represents a move from implementation support in one sector toward systemic governance reform across the region.
NALAS is moving from sector-specific municipal implementation (energy) toward broader governance and institutional reform topics, suggesting they are positioning themselves as a regional policy voice rather than a technical project partner.
NALAS has never led an H2020 project — they participate exclusively as consortium members, which is consistent with their role as a network body that contributes access and dissemination rather than research output. Their consortia are large and geographically wide (26 partners across 21 countries), suggesting they are brought in specifically for their regional reach into South-East Europe. Working with NALAS means getting a conduit to local government decision-makers across the Western Balkans — valuable for projects that need real-world adoption, not just academic results.
NALAS has built connections with 26 consortium partners across 21 countries through just two projects, which points to wide, diverse networks rather than a tight inner circle. Their South-East European mandate gives them natural reach into countries like Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo — regions underrepresented in EU research consortia.
NALAS offers something almost no other H2020 participant can: direct institutional access to elected local governments across South-East Europe, including EU candidate and pre-accession countries. For any project that needs municipal buy-in, policy dissemination to local authorities, or real-world testing in a post-socialist governance context, NALAS is one of very few organisations that can open those doors. Their combination of legal standing as an intergovernmental network body, a Strasbourg base for EU policy access, and on-the-ground roots in SEE municipalities is genuinely rare.
