by Professor David Greenwood
Consulting Editor

This Yearbook is a 'pilot' volume for what is planned to be - as the title implies - an annual publication. It is a product of the Initiative on Transparency of Military Budgets in South-Eastern Europe (the Budget Transparency Initiative or BTI, for short) which was launched - within the framework of the Stability Pact for the region - in March 2001, following extensive preparatory work by Bulgaria and the United Kingdom.

The document comprises introductory material, a series of country profiles containing summary expenditure data on outlays and budgets, some analyses of these data and a brief conclusion. In addition a sequence of appendices presents the original data as submitted to the writing team by participating states. Not all the countries subscribing to the Initiative provided figures for inclusion in this initial compilation. The appended material is therefore incomplete and some country sections are token entries. The intention is to make good these deficiencies in a subsequent volume.

The statistics and commentary are offered as a contribution to defence transparency and transparency-building in South-Eastern Europe. As such they are intended to serve two purposes. The first is international transparency: making this material readily available to a readership in all the participating states themselves (and elsewhere) is seen as a potential confidence- and security-building exercise in a region where there is a history of mutual suspicion, even antagonism. The second is domestic transparency: information is provided here for which there may not be sources in individual participating states that are easily accessible to persons and groups - elected representatives and legislatures, scholars and academic institutions, journalists and the print and broadcast media - who have responsibilities (formal or informal, direct or indirect) for holding their governments accountable for what is spent on defence and security.

There is more to transparency and transparency-building than furnishing figures, however. The user needs to know what they mean, and what can and cannot be inferred from them. It is also important to understand how the numbers were reached, the mechanics of resource allocation - programming and budgeting (and budget execution) - in any country or countries under scrutiny. The first of these supplementary requirements is met by the commentary in this Yearbook, and there will be more explanatory notes and analytical work in later editions. The second requirement is to be met by a companion volume now in preparation, viz. a Survey of Defence Budgeting Processes in South-Eastern Europe. This other text is designed to complement the present statistical compilation precisely by showing 'how the numbers were reached' in the countries covered. It should also reveal where 'good practice' is to be found in the region, helping to identify where and how 'better practice' might be encouraged, with the eventual goal of promoting 'best practice' throughout the neighbourhood.

The coverage and content of these two complementary texts derive directly from the objectives of the Initiative, as agreed in the inaugural BTI meeting in March 2001 which was held on premises of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna. At this gathering a Multinational Steering Group (MSG) was established one of whose first acts was to agree on a formulation of objectives. To quote the MSG's seminal document, the BTI's aims are:
to promote domestic and international transparency of defence budgets, and also the budgeting process, throughout South Eastern Europe;
and
to encourage good practice in decision-making (policy-making, planning, programming and budgeting) with particular reference to accountability.
In Vienna, the MSG also created an Academic Working Group (AWG) to oversee the substantive work to be done under its auspices and framed terms of reference for a Group of Experts (GOE) to be established in Sofia. Most important, it gave these subordinate bodies their initial tasking, namely to produce this pilot Yearbook and the companion Survey.

The AWG met briefly in Vienna and convened again in May 2001, under the Chairmanship of Professor Tilcho Ivanov. At this meeting it drew up guidelines for fulfilment of the dual assignment and asked Professor Ivanov to be Consulting Editor of the volumes.

Because of difficulties in setting-up and staffing the GOE, the job of acting on this guidance - requesting, assembling, collating, analysing and presenting the material for the Yearbook - fell to the MSG Secretariat, located at the defence ministry in Sofia. These duties were taken on by Stephan Stephanov who, with some part-time assistance, prepared a draft which the AWG reviewed at a third meeting in November 2001. Thereafter, in his capacity as de facto Editor of the work, he produced the volume as it now appears.

Two debts of gratitude have to be acknowledged. The first is to those participating countries who provided the raw material for the compilation. The second is to Stephan Stephanov (and his helpers) for their hard work - above and beyond the call of duty - in processing and analysing the submitted material and, in effect, creating this impressive document.

January 2002
Groningen, the Netherlands