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Public Policy School Licensed ahead of the IV Generation

After we have initiated the implementation of licensing procedure for our programme “Public Policy School” in accordance with the Law on Education, by the decision of National Council for Education brought on December 23rd, the importance of our School as an official programme for the acquisition of knowledge as well as skills in the field of public policies was affirmed.

Two days later, we signed the contract with the Commission for Allocation of the Part of the Revenues from Games of Chance about implementing the IV Generation of “Public Policy School”.

After successful completion of “Public Policy School” in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the Commission has supported the implementation of the programme for the IV generation of students, which will be carried out by Institute Alternative throughout the 2015. Continued implementation was made official today by signing the contract.

So far, the programme of Public Policy School was attended by 80 participants, among which the largest number of persons employed in state administration and a smaller number of employees in local government, trade union organizations, the media, the activists of NGOs as well as the best undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Considering the fact the formal education system in Montenegro does not provide sufficient knowledge and skills in the field of public policy research, the main objective of the School is to contribute to its quality development through strengthening the capacity of stakeholders about stages and actors of public policies development process. Additionally, the School offers an opportunity to enhance the communication and cooperation among the participants from the range of different sectors.

“Public Policy School” is implementing through five modules resulting in total amount of twenty six lectures, while the lecturers are experts in this field, professors from Universities of Zagreb, Belgrade and Podgorica as well as other experts and actors in the field. Some of previous lecturers at the School are: Tihomir Žiljak, Anka Kekez Koštro, Prof. Snežana Đorđević, Marina Škrabalo, Professor Zoran Stojiljković, Vlado Pavićević, Dragan Đurić, Jovana Marović, Dragiša Mijačić, Zlatko Vujović.

During the programme, the participants will have a chance to familiarize themselves with key aspects of the creation, analysis, implementation and monitoring of public policies. Additional topics to be covered are policies within the different sectors, the role of Think Tanks in public policy making process, and the role of state as well as non-state actors in policy making at EU level.

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Authorities Not Reacting to Recruitment Abuses

Administrative inspection has not adequately responded to our initiative and failed to examine the extent to which the job mediation is used to circumvent the mandatory rules of staffing in the public administration.

Following the findings of the regular monitoring of recruitment and promotion in state authorities, which IA has been conducting two years in a row, we have submitted an initiative to the Administrative Inspection for determining whether certain state authorities, by recruiting people via employment mediation agencies for job positions categorized by Law on Civil Servants and State Employees breached this law.

Our findings suggest that at least two out of 25 state authorities who responded to our freedom of information requests concluded employees transfer agreements during the last year.

The Labour Law prescribes that these agreements can be made only for tasks which do not require special expertise. In addition, they cannot exceed a maximum period of 120 days.

Nonetheless, analysis of the agreements concluded between the two state authorities _ Environmental Protection Agency and Education Bureau, and Agency for employment mediation “Dekra” suggest that these agreements have not been concluded in a legally prescribed manner. This is because “Dekra” has transferred employees for tasks which require special expertise, while an employee to the Education Bureau has been transferred for a period which exceeds 120 days.

Yet, in response to our initiative, Administrative inspection argues that there was no abuse of employment mediation in these cases.

Although we have asked from this institution, given the frequent problem of “administrative silence”, to undertake additional actions with an aim of determining the actual scope of employment mediation and the degree of its compliance with law, Administrative Inspection has not undertaken any of these actions.

Such attitude of the institution with key competences for oversight of implementation of the legislation in the field of state administration is a cause of concern and it can prolong practices which can reverse the efforts in reforming the country’s civil service.

Our newer findings during the research within the project “State Administration in Montenegro: Equal for All”, supported by the U.S. Embassy in Podgorica, suggest that employment mediation is still misused for circumventing obligatory testing procedures for entering the civil service.

The State Commission for Control of Public Procurement Procedures, which was criticized last year by media and civil society organizations for filling vacancies with no previous vacancy announcements, this year also took over two workers from an employment mediation agency for job positions categorized by the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees (independent advisor III and state employee VI).

We thus once again urge Administrative Inspection to respond to our initiative and undertake necessary inspection measures with an aim of further investigation of irregularities and recruitments in state authorities which are not in line with the Law.

Milena Milošević
Public Policy Researcher

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10 Years of PASOS – Meeting of the Assembly

At the Assembly of the PASOS, held in Warsaw on 12-13 December, 10th anniversary of the network of research centers was marked. During the assembly, three members of Board of Directors were appointed, the winners of annual PASOS awards were announced, and annual report on the work was adopted, while considering the strategy proposal for the next period of three years.

Detalj sa Skupštine PASOS-a

Kosovar Civil Society Foundation was awarded with the “Achievement of the Year”, for their successful initiative which put an end on undermining of integrity and existence of NGOs through unconstitutional legal solutions.

The award for the best publication of the year was granted to EUROPEUM Institute for European policies, for their paper “Taking Stock of EU Civil Society Funding in EAP Countries“, in which they analyze how European Union funds civil society organizations in the countries of Eastern Partnership.

By the decision of the Assembly, Neža Kogovšek Šalamon (Slovenia), Piotr Kaźmierkiewicz (Poland) and Andrew Cartwright (Hungary – CEU) were reappointed as the members of the Board of Directors.

Representative of Institute Alternative on the PASOS Assembly was Marko Sošić, who took part in the pannel discussion talking about Advocacy and Communication models. He presented our previous successes (but also failures from which we have learned) in advocating for implementation of our recommendations, as well as the impact on the decision makers, and presenting our work to different audience.

More information about the event and the celebration of decade of foundation of PASOS can be found on their official website.

Institute Alternative is the youngest member of PASOS, granted with the membership in June 2014. This was the first event of this network in which we participated in. PASOS (Policy Association for an Open Society) is the network founded in 2004 which supports the development and strengthens the outreach and impact of its more than 50 members. The goal of PASOS is to strengthen independent think-tanks to ensure the lessons of transition are understood, shared, and applied.

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Cooperation Between Police and Prosecution: Stories of prosecutors, police officers and judges

Comments about insufficiently good cooperation, lack of communication and coordination between the Police and the Public Prosecution Office in Montenegro have become platitudes in public discussions and problem which everyone agrees upon. Poor assessment of that cooperation can be heard even from representatives of the leaders of the state authorities, who are responsible to work together with both prosecutors and police. However, it was never specified what are the causes of this practice, in which manner are these barrier to collaboration manifested and how to overcome them.

Given the need to further investigate what are the reasons and what are the barriers to better joint work of police and prosecutors in criminal cases, a research team of Institute Alternative has prepared the concept with six thematic areas and 30 questions related to the work of the police and the prosecution. Based on this concept, 27 interviews were conducted at the local level in three municipalities – Bar, Pljevlja and Podgorica, on the principle of equitable regional representation. Interviews were conducted with representatives of the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office, Security Centers and the Basic Court in these three cities, in May 2014. We owe special thanks to the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Supreme Court which have enabled us to conduct interviews and thereby contributed to our research.

The attitudes of the respondents were presented in the report in front of you, which consists of 14 thematic chapters and includes different aspects of work of police and prosecution, as well as conclusions and recommendations for improving the identified problems. The special value of the report is the large number of very specific examples, which illustrate the functioning of these bodies, relations between then, joint work on cases, problems at work and sources of dissatisfaction of police officers, prosecutors, judges. Statements of the respondents are given in the original, with minor corrections.

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We Took Part in the 2015 Budget Debate

Lack of transparency of the capital budget, breaching the Guidelines of fiscal and macroeconomic policy, disrespect to recommendations of State Audit Institution in planning budget and excessive generality of parts of budget are the key issues on which we have drawn attention to MPs during the budget proposal to the Committee on Economy, Finance and Budget.

This year we once again took part in debate on budget proposal for 2015 by the invitation of the Committee. Our researcher, Marko Sošić, presented our key objections to the budget proposal to the MPs and representatives of the Ministry of Finance.

This is the first annual Law on Budget which will have sanctions for its violation, due to adoption of new Law on Budget and Fiscal Responsibility earlier this year. Therefore we cautioned all the stakeholders involved to approach the planning with greater responsibility, in order to alleviate problems in the budget execution later.

We pointed out the following issues to the attention of MPs:

The high amount and increase of 25% compared to the previous year for a very non-transparent point “Other services” within the category of “Services”, without any explanations of purpose of costs. It is necessary to specify the Rules on the Budget specifications (…) in order to establish better control over planning and spending of the budget resources

Unrealistic estimated costs for court procedures, with a decrease of 40% compared to the budget plan for 2014. There are objective doubts that this expenditure was not properly estimated within many institutions. For example, only 1 EUR is estimated for Ministry of Interiors in this budget line, although it had higher expenditures in 2014.

The growth of expenditures for payments of service contract by acc. 15% compared to 2014, despite of SAI recommendations to reduce this type of employment, that is, to put an end to the illegal practice of using service contracts to perform duties which fall within the scope of ordinary responsibility of authorities.

What concerns the most, is the reduction of the budget part for the Commission for the Control of State Aid, for which the SAI recommended, after the audit of State guarantees, strengthening the organizational and professional capacity

Breaching of Guidelines of fiscal and macroeconomic policy for the period 2014-2017 by Government with breaching the budget limit specified in guidelines for 2015.

The lack of transparency of the capital budget, as well as key development component of the budget. We are not talking only about the project highway, which is the center of attention, but also on the other 120 projects that are placed in the capital budget for the next year and are in various stages of implementation. Despite the fact that over 284 million EUR will be spent on those projects, they are represented by less than 15 pages of text in the explanation of the budget proposal. Thus, MPs are placed in a position to bring decision on the capital budget without access to planning and project documentation.

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Training: Screening the chapter 23

The second workshop of the Macedonian Network 23 was held from 11 to 14 December in Struga, Macedonia, and our Dina Bajramspahić shared experience of civil society in Montenegro in monitoring the accession negotiations in Chapter 23 and the directions for the reform of the Special Prosecutor’s Office.

The workshop topic “Experiences, Challenges and Potential Risks in the work of Network 23” was dedicated to the structure of Chapter 23 “Judiciary and Fundamental Rights” as well as to screening findings of this chapter in countries of region.

The participants of the training were the representatives of the Civil Society Organization Network 23, whose task is monitoring the situation in the field of Chapter 23 in Macedonia.

The project is implemented by European Policy Institute, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and Center for Change Management with the support of EU. Besides Institute Alternative, associates from the region are European Policy Centre from Belgrade and European Institute Foundation from Sofia.

On this occasion, Dina has delivered 2 presentations during this three-day workshop.

First one was referring to the position of Montenegro at the moment when it comes to negotiations in general as well on the most important issues in relation to chapter 23. She presented the report on the screening of Montenegro for Chapter 23, benchmarks as well as the Action plan for this chapter. She also presented the information about the participation of civil society in the preparation, monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the Action Plan, the participation of Institute Alternative in the working group for this chapter, the key actions (measures) in the field of justice, corruption and human rights, key challenges and shortcomings in the implementation of these reforms, interim benchmarks, audit of Action plan, and problems in Montenegro in chapter 23 that the European Commission has pointed in this year’s progress Report.

The second presentation was dealing with one specific topic, which is the segment of reforms under Chapter 23 – the reform of the special prosecutor’s office and establishing the basis for the formation of the Montenegrin Special Office for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime, modeled on the example of Croatian Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK). She presented the draft Law on the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office, the comments of Institute Alternative on a draft and its key limitations, problems in the work of the former Department of Special Prosecutor’s Office, and the lessons learned from the comparative practices which Institute Alternative has presented in the study “The institutional framework for investigations of corruption and organized crime – Comparative Models”. She has also presented the key findings of the report IA cooperation between the police and the prosecution on the “local” level and other activities of our Institute which are related to strengthening inter-agency cooperation in the criminal justice system in Montenegro.

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