Abstract. The present requirements impose to achieve profound reforms in public administration both in the EU Member States and in the acceding countries from South-Eastern Europe, in view to align at the European Union standards.

Public administration reform strategies aimed to identify measures for ensuring the modernization of public administration in order to optimize decision-making, to improve human resource management, public finance, quality of public services by promoting and introducing quality management elements.

The objectives aim in this study consist in identifying the quality policies and their implementation, the use of the quality management instruments in practice and the analysis of the impact of the accession process to the European Union, regarding the promotion and development of quality management in the public sector by means of the reform documents and strategies in the analyzed countries. Through the selection of the analyzed countries within the study, we are attempting to offer an overview regarding the introduction and use of the quality management instruments in public administration, as well as their convergence in the South - Eastern European states, EU and non-EU states.

The research of this study is based on the reform documents and strategies of the public sector in the countries analyzed, taken from the Internet, having as source the official websites of several public institutions. Also, this study is based on the analysis of several empirical studies performed (mainly by the European Institute of Public Administration(1)) for the EU Member States and candidate countries, and a series of studies regarding quality management in the public sector. In addition, we mention that there are also EU documents and publications regarding the subject of our study, recently achieved, throughout the EU Presidency of Slovenia(2) (2008) and throughout the EU Presidency of Spain (2002). We also mention the studies published by the World Bank and OECD, which promote, by means of publications, quality management in the public sector. At the national level there are a few researchers studying quality management in the public sector and analyzing and comparing reform documents and strategies in the public sector of different countries in South-Eastern Europe, tracking the promotion and application of the quality management instruments.

Keywords: public administration reform; quality management; reform strategies; convergence.