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Water services in Central and Eastern European countries have experienced important transformation processes since the 90s. After a first wave of wholesale reforms of the economic systems after the collapse of the Soviet Union (decentralization and private sector involvement), more recent reforms try to address specific water-related challenges which many countries in the region encounter on their way to EU accession. To tackle issues like rising tariffs, low quality and performance, limited access and insufficient infrastructure maintenance, the creation of dedicated regulatory bodies as well as aggregation reforms have been two key reform approaches.

The Water Global Practice, under the WSS GSG Utility Turnaround thematic area, has implemented the Global Study on WSS Utility Aggregation to provide evidence-based guidance to policy makers and practitioners regarding when, why, and how water and sanitation utilities can work together ("aggregate") to successfully deliver specific policy outcomes, such as better services or lower costs. This work builds on a review of existing literature and an analysis of both qualitative and quantitative evidence, a global data set of international trends and a series of case studies. Additionally, as described in this report, a statistical analysis based on IB-Net data (which cover 1,306 utilities from more than 140 countries) was conducted to better understand the potential gains from aggregation. The objective of the statistical analysis was to empirically assess the performance consequences of aggregations. To this end, the statistical analysis report uses the whole universe of utilities from the IB-Net database to address three core aspects of aggregations. For more information on the global study, refer to the report, Joining Forces for Better Services? When, Why, and How Water and Sanitation Utilities Can Benefit from Working Together. The accompanying toolkit (accessible at www.worldbank.org/water/aggregationtoolkit), offers a broader set of references and resources to inform aggregation processes.

This paper analyzes the effects of globalization on social protection expenditures in European countries. The analysis adds to the literature due to its special focus on (a) the Eastern European countries and (b) on differences in globalization effects between welfare regimes. We find evidence in favor of the compensation hypothesis in Western Europe which is driven by the conservative welfare regime, outweighing the efficiency effect of globalization in the social-democratic welfare regime. In Eastern European countries the efficiency effect is predominant. No globalization effect is found for the liberal and the southern welfare regimes. Our results indicate some convergence within Western Europe and a divergence between the East and the West of Europe. We stress the importance of disaggregating by welfare regimes when exploring the effects of globalization on public social protection expenditures. (author's abstract), Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination