Posted on

Press release: IA did the competent institutions’ job by publishing contracts on municipal debt reprogramming

Contracts on municipal debt reprogramming in Montenegro are not proactively published on the websites of the Ministry of Finance and local authorities; instead Institute Alternative had to pay in order to publish this important information on its website My town (Moj grad).

Institute Alternative received contracts on municipal debt reprogramming for 16 municipalities in Montenegro from 2015 via freedom of access to information requests.

Contracts, which were signed between the Ministry of Finance and 16 Montenegrin municipalities, define the conditions under which the debt for unpaid taxes and contributions on salaries of employees in local governments, including institutions and enterprises established by the municipality, will be reprogrammed.

The importance for these contracts to be available to public is stressed by their overall values of € 90 million. That would be in the spirit of the Law on Free Access to Information, that supports the proactive disclosure of information of public interest. However, contracts are only available via request.

This is not a unique case of insufficient transparency of information on the state of the local governments. We remind that the Institute Alternative initiated administrative proceedings against the Ministry of Finance in December last year, after we were illegally denied access to information on local finances, which were adopted by the Government in July 2015.
Municipalities that have signed a contract with the Ministry of Finance are: Danilovgrad, Budva, Pljevlja, Šavnik, Bijelo Polje, Nikšić, Mojkovac, Kolašin, Cetinje, Andrijevica, Bar, Berane, Rožaje, Plav, Ulcinj, Žabljak.

Nikšić Municipality should settle the highest debt of nearly € 18 million, while Andrijevica Municipality is obliged to settle the smallest debt, of approximately € 370 thousand.

Contracts determine the period of tax debt reprogramming. Most municipalities have two decades at their disposal, but this is not the case with coastal municipalities, Budva and Bar, where multimillion debts reprogramming has to be conducted in five years.

You can access the contracts on tax debt reprogramming, in general, on IA portal, My town (Moj grad).

IVANA BOGOJEVIĆ

Project Associate

Posted on

Press Release: Bill on Administrative Inspection finally in the Parliament

Institute Alternative welcomes putting on the Agenda of the Parliament of Montenegro the Bill on Administrative Inspection adopted by the Government in March 2015 and calls upon the MPs to improve the text of this law through amendment procedure.

Taking into account the importance of this regulation for the legality, efficiency and effectiveness of the work of public administration, as well as for improving the quality of life of citizens, we urge the Members of Parliament to improve the text of this law through amendments, especially in the part relating to regulation of the obligation of cooperation with other administrative inspection bodies and institutions, such as the State Audit Institution (SAI). Furthermore, we consider it necessary to prescribe mandatory contents of the records kept by the Administrative Inspection, but also rules governing communication between administrative inspectors and heads of the authorities under which the inspection is performed. In the end, it is necessary to regulate the handling of complaints, based on the comparative practice of the countries in the region.

One of the key preconditions for the lawful work of public administration is the effective operation of Administrative Inspection. Therefore, regulation of its operation under a separate law aims to improve the level of expertise and quality in dealing with administrative cases. Administrative Inspection supervises the implementation of regulations governing the work of state administration, the rights and obligations of civil servants and employees, administrative procedure, as well as the prohibition of discrimination.

For citizens and legal entities, reform of administrative procedure should bring simplification of procedures before administrative bodies, as well as an increase in the quality of public services. One of the novelties envisaged by the Bill on Administrative Inspection is the possibility for citizens and legal entities to submit an initiative to perform the inspection, in order to achieve protection against unlawful work of public administration bodies.

Consideration of the Bill on Administrative Inspection is planned for the Sixth Sitting of the First Ordinary Session of the Parliament of Montenegro, which will be held on Wednesday, 1 June 2016.

Milica MILONJIĆ
Public Policy Researcher

Related posts:

Posted on

What administration do we want by 2020: While waiting tangible results…

Instead of being at service of citizens and business, public administration is a burden to them – this is a message delivered by Institute Alternative at today’s conference in Podgorica.

The conference was organized within the project “Civil Society for Good Governance: To Act and Account” with the support of the European Union, in cooperation with partners, the Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro, and NGOs Bonum from Pljevlja, Natura from Kolasin and New Horizon from Ulcinj.

Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board of the Institute Alternative (IA), commented on the current state of public administration, which, he said, except for being the linkage between decision makers and citizens, is the key sphere in which private and public interest entwine.

“Therefore, this is precisely overarching process for prevent abuse of public resources. Bearing in mind that this is an election year, this challenge is even more relevant,” he stressed.

“Administration – as we see it today,” Muk added , “is the administration characterized by weak competition for the key expert managerial positions. Also, there are many employees on positions requiring less work, and less people on positions with heavy workloads”.

Refik Bojadzic, Secretary General of the Association of Municipalities in Montenegro, emphasized that the Association is available to everyone as a partner in strengthening transparency of the administration and enforcing cooperation with the NGOs.

As he emphasized, in relation to the local communities, priority issues to be resolved until 2020 are under-regulated system of local civil service, reform of the communal activity, financing of local municipalities.

“Municipalities need institutional support. It is necessary to form the Ministry for local municipality or public administration’’, Bojadzic said.

It was emphasized at the conference that the changes in public administration are permanent, considering that reform has been in force from 2002.

Danijela Nedeljkovic-Vukcevic, head of the Direction for State Administration within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, referred to the work on the preparation of the 2016 – 2020 Draft Strategy for Public Administration Reform.

“This is the best strategy ever prepared,” she said, noting that some of the key issues requiring additional efforts are strengthening of administrative capacities, human resource planning, and enhancement of inter-institutional coordination.

Looking from the perspective of the institution, which influence is irreplaceable for the control of public finances, Branislav Radulović, member of the State Audit Institution Senate, emphasized the problem of the frequent changes in organizational structure of the administration.

These changes reflect negatively on the control of public administration authorities.

“There is no department, which is continuously the same,” he said, reminding that the public administration reform, as such, used to be under the Ministry of Justice, and then moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

He also pointed to the problem of authorities within the ministries, and reminded on the Article 28 of the Law on State Administration that defines this organizational units within Montenegrin administration.

“This Article states that authorities within the ministries are formed when the range and nature of their activities do not need special organization and independence in work’’, explained Radulovic, additionally highlighting the paradox that Tax Administration or Police Administration, the largest institution with 5000 employees, are considered as authorities within the ministries.

Suzana Radulovic, Secretary General of the Montenegrin Employers Federation, referred to the “Five Business Killers”, a publication this federation issued last year, which points to the good governance deficiencies in Montenegro, as major barriers to the business community.

These are, among other things, inadequate regulatory framework, corruption, and scarce responsibility of state and local authorities, and the problem of lack of expertise and professionalism.

She pointed to the lack of public consultation in policy making.

“The laws are being adopted, and we know nothing about that,” she said.

Timo Ligi, a senior adviser at the joint initiative of the European Commission and the OECD – SIGMA, reminded the participants of Montenegro’s initial results in measuring compliance with the European Principles of Public Administration. This principles were formulated in 2014, precisely in order to serve as a kind of framework for assessing readiness of countries (in this area), wishing to join the European Union (EU).

“Compared to other countries, Montenegro has received a good grade,” Ligi said.

However, the problems he pointed out included lack of evidence-based policy making and of appropriate impact assessment.

He also pointed to the problem of authorities within ministries, especially in terms of drawing the lines of accountability for these authorities.

Milena Milošević, public policy research at Institute alternative, said that some other systemic laws came before the long-awaited PAR Strategy, possibly endangering its key objectives.

According to her, the Law on public sector wages and proposed amendments to the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees and the Law on Local Self-Government, partially run against the overall objective of the reform, which is a service oriented and efficient administration, characterized by the growth of public confidence in its work.

“Therefore, the real question for the authorities, which I have asked previously, without getting convincing answer, is this – what do we want to accomplish with Public Administration Reform Strategy and what could we do if its implementation further demystifies systemic shortcoming we currently neglect”, she added.

Discussion of the participants at the conference also referred to the problem of large expenditures that citizens pay for the irresponsibility of the public administration authorities.

The recent report by the State Audit Institution pointed out at one of these problems, according to which more than 70 million euros in the period between 2012 and 2015 was spent on the basis of court rulings against the state, which are charged by force.

Below you can watch parts of our panelists’ speeches:

Posted on

MERLIN in Brussels – About the rule of law with the representatives of the EU

With the colleagues from the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy from Serbia and the European Policy Institute from Macedonia, we visited the EU institutions and talked to representatives of Brussels-based organizations and foundations dealing with the EU accession of the Western Balkans countries from 16 to 19 May 2016.

The visit was organized by the Open Society European Policy Institute and the European Fund for the Balkans. The event builds upon the project being implemented by the three organizations entitled “Monitoring and Evaluating the Rule of Law in the Western Balkans (MERLIN WB)”.

The meetings took place at the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (DG JUST) and the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR).

Besides with the representatives of the European Commission, we got together with the members of the Committee on EU enlargement of the Council of European Union (COELA), as well as with the European External Action Service (EEAS) representatives.

During the visit, the roundtable discussion “Rule of Law in the Western Balkans: Improving the conditionality mechanism of the chapters 23 and 24 of the EU enlargement negotiations” was held at the premises of the Open Society European Policy Institute. The event gathered experts from research centers, organizations and foundations which deal with issues related to the enlargement policy and the Western Balkans, as well as the guests from the European Parliament.

The topic of the meetings was the current situation in Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia within the areas covered by the chapters 23 and 24. During the meetings with the EU representatives and the organizations which monitor Montenegrin accession process, we pointed out our observations on the problems related to the integrity of police, the work of the Special Prosecution for Organized Crime and Corruption, our objections on the commencement of the work of Agency for Prevention of Corruption, poor cooperation between the State Audit Institution and the prosecution, the latest trends in the public procurement system, poor control over the security and defense sector, as well as the current developments on the political scene, the transitional government and the control mechanisms which need to be established in order to prevent the misuse of public funds by the political parties.

The aim of the project MERLIN WB is the establishment of the regional coordination mechanism for democracy and the rule of law through the implementation of obligations under the chapters 23 and 24. The leading institution implementing the project is the European Policy Institute from Skopje, while the partners are Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, Institute Alternative and GONG from Croatia.

Posted on

IA representative at the conference on access to information in the digital era

IA’s Public Policy Researcher, Milica Milonjić, participated at the conference on Internet as commons and the new politics of commoning organized by the SHARE Foundation, with the support of Heinrich Boell Foundation, Institute for Political Ecology and Green European Foundation. The event took place from May 19-21, 2016, in Belgrade.

The conference gathered more than a hundred participants from all over Europe. During open discussions and panels, they debated a wide range of topics, particularly stressing the question of legal framework within the European Union which deals with fundamental rights in the digital environment, such as the protection of personal data and the free access to knowledge and art. The question of impact which citizens of EU Member States can have on the process of drafting the EU legislation and what role in this process have big business and IT forces was also accentuated.

Participants were concerned with the issues of respect for the principles of democracy and human rights when collecting large amounts of data from social networks, sensor data, etc. (big data); liability of companies for the abuse of citizens’ data; transparency of algorithms; copyright in the era of sharing economy; collision / complementarity of right to privacy and right to access of information, as well as protection of personal data and the public’s right to know; modalities for the involvement of experts in policy-making; protection of whistleblowers and leakage of information; regulatory models for responsible disclosure of user generated content.

Some of the participants of the conference were:

  • Julia Reda, Member of the European Parliament from Germany
  • Nevena Ružić, Head of Compliance and Cooperation Department at the Serbia’s Office of Information Commissioner, Vice Chair of Consultative Committee of the CoE Convention 108 (data protection), Republic of Serbia
  • Nataša Pirc Musar, lawyer and former Information Commissioner, Slovenia
  • Aleksandar Todorović, OCCRP, Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Ásta Helgadottir, member of the Pirate Party in the Parliament of Iceland
  • Prof. Rainer Kuhlen, University of Konstanz, Computer and Information Science Department, Germany
  • Stevan Dojčinović, KRIK / OCCRP, Serbia
  • Jeanette Hofmann, Humboldt University, Institute for Internet and Society, Germany
  • Peter Sunde, Pirate Bay, Sweden
  • Paula Petričević, Ombudswoman, Daily “Vijesti”, Montenegro
Posted on

Institutions covered by the Agreement on Free and Fair Elections to ensure full transparency of work and proactive disclosure of information

Centre for Civic Education (CCE), Institute Alternative (IA) and Network for the Affirmation of NGO sector (MANS) call all institutions, subjects of Agreement on Free and Fair Elections, to ensure full transparency of their work and to provide continuous and timely disclosure of all relevant information in their possession on their official websites. Also, we call also other institutions, which are not under this Agreement, to ensure full transparency and proactivity in the disclosure of information, and thus to contribute to the creation of conditions for fair and free elections.

Law on Financing of Political Subjects and Election Campaigns prescribes the obligation of every institution to publish a set of most important information concerning their work, from the moment the elections were announced until a month after the end of elections. Still, due to the fact that Montenegro is characterised with high level of distrust into election process, as well as the suspicions that public funds and authorisations are being abused for electoral purposes long before the elections are published, the institutions should regularly publish all information about their work, regardless of whether the election campaign is ongoing or not.

All ministries, directorates, state funds, local self-governments and state and locally-owned companies should publish most important information related primarily to every aspect of financial management, employment and conduct of programme activities which could be the subject of abuse for electoral purposes. Every institution should post the following information on their websites: analytical cards from all their accounts, information on payments, employment, procurement, all kinds of transfers from the budget, fees, severance pay, assistance and sponsorships and number of other activities of the respective authority on which the public was not fully informed so far.

Special emphasis should be put on data of the Ministry of Finances and the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, since the information from these two institutions could indicate on the largest number of abuse of public funds and authorisations for electoral purposes. The Ministry of Finances should post on two-weeks level the complete except from state treasury, for all budgetary units, as well as the analytical card of budgetary reserve. On the other hand, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare should regularly publish the information on one-off and regular social benefits, including the information on the number of users and individual and total amounts of benefits paid.

Regular and proactive disclosure of all these information is not just the obligation of Government of Election Trust, but the basic standard that should become the commitment of every future government.

Consequently, regular disclosure of such information would significantly increase the level of transparency of the work of public administration, since the interested public would have insight into the basic information on the financial flows and particularly important activities of authorities, which were so far opaque.

By increasing the framework of disclosed information proactively, we would subsequently on long term reduce the space for abuse, which produced distrust into election process and empowered the suspicion on the occurrence of misuse of public funds for party interests.

By implementing this approach as a new open platform, Government, local self-governments and public companies would demonstrate that they are prepared through their own actions to restore the trust into election process, thus also into legality of work of public sector bodies in general. Hence, we call every institution to provide full transparency of its work as well as a proactive disclosure of every information in the intervals no longer than 15 days and thus create the prerequisites for the beginning of building trust into election process.

Vanja Ćalović, Executive director, MANS

Daliborka Uljarević, Executive director, CCE

Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board, IA