Presentation of the findings of the project: State Administration: Equal For All
Regional TEN Conference on the Public Administration performance
Meeting with representatives of the Ministry of the Interior and Police Administration on the topic of the Police Integrity
Initiative to make the EC’s opinions available to the public
In an initiative submitted on 13 October 2015, Institute Alternative (IA) urged the European Commission to make its opinions on Montenegrin legislation, as well as peer review reports available to the public, and thus prevent the Government from manipulating the EU accession negotiations.
Institute Alternative submitted the letter addressed to Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, and to Mr Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for the Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations, and pointed out to significant limitations of transparency of Montenegrin accession negotiations. IA called upon the proactive approach of the European Union in making the process more open to the public.
From the beginning of accession negotiations, the Government used Commission’s opinions on draft legislation and associated strategic documents as the key argument for their adoption or lack of thereof. On the other hand, the Government simultaneously refused to make the EC’s documents available to MPs, CSOs and the general public.
Lack of availability of the EC’s opinions and reports casts doubt over the policy making process in Montenegro. The quality of legal and strategic documents is called into question since it is not possible to find out whether they were prepared and adopted in accordance with suggestions provided by the Commission.
“Being the only stakeholder possessing all the mentioned documents, the Government of Montenegro is in the position to select only positive assessments and present them to the public, while disregarding those which are not as favourable”, it is stated in the letter.
In this manner, the right to free access to information and the right to participation of non-state actors in the policy making process are being seriously restricted.
Transparency of the negotiation process is being even more compromised since important decisions on chapters 23 and 24 are being made behind closed doors. This is the result of an increasing role of the Rule of Law Council and the practice of concealing Council’s conclusions even from the members of working groups who report on implementation of action plans for the above-mentioned negotiating chapters.
Therefore, Institute Alternative finds it imperative that the Commission publishes its opinions and reports. These documents should be redacted where necessary, in order to ensure protection of personal data. Otherwise, the European Commission will continue to encourage the Government to be non-transparent towards its citizens, while the negotiation process will be slowed down furtherly.
Stevo MUK
President of the Managing Board
Note: The letter addressed to the President of the European Commission and the Commissioner for the Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations can be found here in its entirety.
Related articles: “Negotiations between Montenegro and the EU: Data access for the privileged only”
TV Show: How do the municipalities spend their budget?
Our public policy researcher Marko Sošić, was a guest in a TV show “Club A” on Atlas television, in order to present a new version of the portal on local finances, www.MojGrad.me, prepared in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme, with the support of the Ministry of Finance.
Besides the new data, he has also presented some innovations of the portal. One of them refers to a component of the Strategic Development Plan of the Capital City of Podgorica 2012-2017, with the online platform with available information on 174 capital projects in the Capital City, referring projects that are planned, implemented or under implementation, and their purpose, location and budgetary provisions.
Additionally, in order to illustrate the complex budget figures and concepts in a citizens-appealing way, “the most palpable” problems in local budgets are presented through interesting infographics. Such issues concern municipal costs, municipal debt, number of employees in local governments and their incomes.
One of the most interesting topics concerned the civil interests in local government budgets, in the context of public participation in the debates on the Draft of the decision on municipality budget, as well as citizens’ participation in drafting strategic documents and decision-making, important for the a certain municipality.
Irrational use of budget funds is a main cause of the financial problems at the local level. Better quality control of the final accounts of the municipality’s budget, and better quality commercial audit is essential to more transparent and accountable management of local governments. However, this responsibility rests not only on local governments but also on greater citizen participation in the budget process, said Sošić.
The TV Show “How do the municipalities spend their budget?” is available on the following link:
Montenegrin public opinion on Public Procurement
Compared to 2012, when Ipsos Strategic Marketing has conducted the same research for the Institute Alternative, now have been registered considerably more citizens who point out that public procurement serve to enrich individuals and legalize corruption. At the same time, compared to the previous period, a higher percentage of citizens believe that the Government of Montenegro is obligated to act in accordance with the Law on Public Procurement, while the percentage of those who find the state authorities and institutions accountable in this process decreases.
As in the previous period, the citizens of Montenegro point out to a large degree that the public procurement process takes place under political influence. So, every other citizen of Montenegro (49%) points out that the public procurement process takes place in accordance with party interests – a significant increase compared to 2012 (34%). Also, compared to the previous period, the percentage of citizens who consider that the public procurement process does not occur impartially and in accordance with objective criteria is increasing, whilst the percentage of those who stated that the public procurement process is transparent and carried out in accordance with the Law is reducing.
More than a half of citizens are dissatisfied with the control of public procurement in Montenegro (59%) and the percentage of citizens who said that they are not satisfied at all is significantly higher compared to 2012. A higher level of dissatisfaction with public procurement have expressed citizens aged between 45 and 50 years old and Serbian nationality, while a higher degree of satisfaction expressed citizens aged between 18 and 29 years and the Montenegrin and Albanian nationality.
Especially when it comes to the Montenegrin citizens employed in the public sector, more than half of them also expressed dissatisfaction with the control of public procurement (57% of employees in the public sector). The percentage of people who said they are not satisfied with the control of public procurement is also higher compared to 2012.
Over two-thirds of Montenegrin citizens emphasizes that it is necessary to involve NGOs in work of the competent authorities for control of public procurement, and the percentage of those who believe that NGO representatives should become full-fledged members of these institutions has increased compared to 2012, as among members of the general population and among citizens who are employed in the public sector.
Most citizens of Montenegro stated that the media do not pay enough attention to the importance of combating fraud and abuse of public procurement, and the percentage of those who hold the same position has significantly increased compared to the previous period.
Presentation of the results of the public opinion survey can be downloaded here.
Public opinion survey on perception of citizens on public procurement was conducted in the period from July 8 – 17, 2015 within the project Civil Society and Citizens against Corruption in Public procurement, which is implemented by the Institute alternative with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands. The project activities are aimed at strengthening cooperation between state and non-state actors in recognising irregularities in public procurement procedures and formulation of recommendations for improvement.