The Appeal Commission has a very important role in the civil service system, as it protects rights and interests of civil servants, state employees and candidates for state authorities. The Law on Civil Servants and State Employees from 2017 has enabled professionalisation of the Appeal Commission. At the same time, its competences have been expanded, and instead of separate local commission, the Commission now decides on appeals of local officials, employees and candidates for jobs in local government. However, the appointment and dismissal procedures were not sufficiently elaborated, which had negative impact on practice.
On October 2, 2021, the Government, by a decision and without holding a session, dismissed the entire Appeal Commission by telephone, referring to legal provisions that indicate unprofessional and negligent performance of duties. This dismissal, was conditioned by the fact that for almost three months, by the time of writing this brief at the end of December 2021, civil service system was left without a functional second-instance body for dealing with complaints. Moreover, it showed omissions on the legal framework that have long term consequences for the effectiveness of protection of employment rights, scheduling, rewarding, termination of employment, etc.
The goal of this analysis is to provide a critical review of the procedure for appointment, decision-making and dismissal of the Appeal Commission and to make lessons from month-long dysfunction of this body in order to prevent similar situations in the future.
