Year: 2016

In most negotiation Chapters, according to the Report of the European Commission, Montenegro has made “some progress”. Two worse grades than this one are “backsliding” or “no progress”. The lowest grades were given to chapters relating to economic and monetary policy and the fisheries.

For the key chapters relating to the fight against corruption and organized crime and the protection of fundamental rights (23 and 24), Montenegro keeps receiving, year after year, the same assessment -limited progress.

The evaluation of the need for further reform in these areas coincide with the analyses made by the Institute Alternative that was presented to the public just a day before the publication of the Annual Report.

The Report insists in particular on strengthening the independence and professionalism of the judiciary, inter alia, through the implementation of a new system of recruitment, evaluation and promotion.

As a reminder, IA has warned, during its presentation of findings on the rule of law in Montenegro, that the recent stance of the Administrative Court that the Judicial Council has broad authority to evaluate all the parameters for the selection of judges and to give priority to some, regardless of the number of points attained in election procedures, can have a negative impact on the reform of the judicial system.

The Montenegro Report also confirms our findings about the necessity for improving cooperation between police and prosecutors in pre-trial proceedings, as well as our conclusions on the lack of pro-activity of the Agency for prevention of corruption.

If these language constructs are translated into numerical scale, which the European Commission has adopted as part of the revised reporting methodology, the average score that Montenegro received, not only for Chapters 23 and 24, but in the overall report, is 3.

This revised methodology from 2015, includes two levels of evaluation – “state of play” and “level of progress”.

The first level of evaluation relates to the assessment of the overall situation in the areas covered by individual chapters, while the second level focuses on a separate assessment of the progress that has been made in the past 12 months, ie. since the release of the previous report.

Descriptive values for state of play are “early stage, some level of preparation, moderately prepared, good level of preparation, well advanced.”
“Backsliding” is the lowest rating that can be obtained for the second basis of reporting from the European Commission for a limited period of 12 months. Next is the “no progress, some progress, good progress and very good progress.”

Thus, the average rating of Montenegro in this year’s Report shows that the country made lowest level of progress.

The worst evaluated chapters were Chapter 13 (Fisheries) and Chapter 17 (Economic and Monetary policy), whereas, in comparison to last year’s report, lower grade received a Chapter on Public Procurement (5). For the Free movement of workers, the Chapter in which previously has been no progress, this year Montenegro has made limited progress, according to the European Commission.

Institute Alternative Team

Montenegro has stagnated in key areas of rule of law, and backslided in the area of cooperation of the Government with NGOs, it was concluded at today’s event organised by Institute alternative (IA).

Today, a day before publication of European Commission’s (EC) report on Montenegro 2016, IA presented key findings of the research “Monitoring and Evaluation of Rule of Law in Montenegro”, with a focus on state of play in the following areas: reform of judiciary, public administration and police, fight agaist corruption, integrity of electoral process, protection of human rights and control function of the Parliament.

Dina Bajramspahić has pointed put that key problems identified at the very beginning of reform of judiciary remain a challenge, particularly in terms of accountability, independence and impartiality.

“This primarily includes issues regarding the appointment and promotion of judges and state prosecutors, transparency in relation to the appraisal system, criminal liability and disciplinary and ethical responsibility, as well as the rationalisation of the judicial network”, she added.

Bajramspahić added that the most recent case of appointment of the judge of Administrative Court raises the question whether the discretionary appointment of judges will take precedence over references and achieved results.

Namely, in this case, Administrative Court has took the position that Judicial Council has wide competences to evaluate all criteria for appointment of judges and to give priority to certain judges, regardless the score of the candidates.

Milena Milošević pointed out that lack of transparency on public finance represents a main black hole of governance in Montenegro.

“The way of spending of budgetary reserve remains secret. We do not know to whom and based on which criteria 62 million euro from the budgetary reserve has gone since 2012 onwards”, she said, reminding that even the information on the finances of Montenegrin municipalities has been declared confidential.

“Cooperation of the Government with NGOs is one of the areas where Montenegro has slid backwards the most”, considers Milošević. This arises from lack of functionality of the Council for Development of NGOs, non-realisation of the effects of the Strategy for Development of NGOs and insufficient regulation of financing of NGO projects from the state budget.

She added that the public administration reform, although one of the key pillars of EU enlargement, is in stagnation and lack of progress in achieving merit-based recruitment and depoliticisation of public administration is particularly worrisome.

Ana Đurnić referred to the work of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption, whose previous work largely confirmed the warnings from the paper that the IA announced earlier this year – “Happy New Agency!”.

“The Agency is passive in cross-checking assets declaration of public officials, while all the imposed penalties are bellow legal minimum”, explained Đurnić, clarifying that the Agency cross checked only one fifth of assets declaration for first six months of its work.

She added that the practice of closing its work for public that started with appointment of its director, has continued ever since, and pointed out that registers of donations and sponsorship to the political subjects should be more transparent.

Đurnić stressed that the work of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office is an isolated example of progress in the rule of law area, despite the fact that its results so far remained limited to the prosecution of cases of corruption in Budva.

Aleksandra Vavić referred to police reform, noting that only a third of the measures planned by the Strategy for Development of the Police was implemented during the first six months of 2016.

“”A large part of the activities implemented so far relates to initiating changes and the development of a normative framework,” explained Vavić.

She considers that the least has been done in the area of establishing electronic records. “The key records are still missing, including Records of persons

She believes that the least has been done in the area of establishing electronic records. “The key records are still missing, including Records of persons towards who the secret surveillance measures have been applied”, although, warns Vavić, those are measures that temporarily restrict citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Ivana Bogojević warned about a worrisome fact that there is no significant progress in the area of media freedoms and freedom of expression.

“Attacks on journalists are not being qualified as criminal acts, and necessary amendments to the media laws, that would guarantee more independence of public service, better protection of integrity of journalists as well as bringing order to the market of electronic media, have not been adopted”, she explained.

When it comes to freedom of assembly, some progress has been achieved, but excessive use of force remains unresolved and problematic issue.

“State Prosecution, even a year after the October protests did not solve cases of beatings of citizens and journalists by the officers of Special Antiterrorist Unit (SAU). It is particularly worrisome that we yet do not know who was hiding behind 28 masks of SAU officials, which have participated in brutal beatings of citizens, while only one person – commander Lješković is waiting for a trial”, considers Bogojević.

Milica Ražnatović reminded of the failure of building trust in the electoral process in Montenegro, and in that regard she particularly pointed out the passivity of State Electoral Commission.

“State Electoral Commission did not publish information important for pre-electoral process, such as, for example, verification of voters list. In only one case and under significant public pressure, the Commission published Opinion concluding that the Law on Personal Identification Document and the Law on Election of Councillors and Representatives are complementary”, reminded Ražnatović.

Statements on phantom voters in the voting list are also a matter of concern. Special Prosecutor’s Office is also not up to their new powers.

“Jurisdiction of Special State Prosecutor’s Office has been extended to reported cases of vote buying. However, this expansion of jurisdiction was not accompanied by the strengthening of human resource capacities, which should be the first step to make the work of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office more efficient and faster”, she explained.

Finally, Aleksandra Vavić additionally referred to the control function of the Parliament, which remains weak despite increased use of certain control mechanisms over the executive.

Vavić particularly emphasised that the Code of Ethics of the MPs has been rendered meaningless by refusing to discuss on the cases of its violation.

She recalled that after the incident in the Parliament during which there were a mutual insults of the MPs of the Democratic Front and the President of the Government, charges for violating the Code of Ethics were filed against seven MPs.

“Although deputy chairman of the Committee on Human Rights and Freedoms from the ranks of the opposition coalition has jurisdiction for convening the sessions, she did not do it. After that, President of the Parliament convened the session, but it was not held due to lack of quorum”, she recalled.

The presented research have been conducted within the regional project “Monitoring and Evaluation of the Rule of Law in the Western Balkans – MERLIN WB”, which we implement together with the European Policy Institute from Skopje and Belgrade Centre for Security Policy from Belgrade, with the financial support of European Fund for The Balkans.

Institute Alternative Team

Institute Alternative will present findings of our research “Monitoring and Evaluation of the Rule of Law in Montenegro“, on Tuesday, 8 November, at PR Centre, starting at 10AM.

The day before the European Commission Report on Montenegro is published, we want to present our perspective on the current state of affairs in the area of the rule of law in Montenegro and the progress made during the past year, with particular focus on negotiating chapters 23 and 24.

Below are some of the questions that our researchers, the authors of the report, will try to find answers to:

• Where are we with the judiciary reform and does the strategic framework contribute to resolving practical issues?
• What are the key challenges of good governance and what has been done in the area of the public administration reform?
• What has been done in the area of fight against corruption in the past year?
• Are the control mechanisms of the Parliament coercive enough for an efficient control of the executive authority?
• Is the police reform strategic framework in compliance with the issues of police officers’ integrity?
• How strong are institutional mechanisms when it comes to human rights protection?
• What is the outreach of the efforts to build electoral trust in Montenegro?

IA conducted this research within the regional project “Monitoring and Evaluation of the Rule of Law in the Western Balkans – MERLIN WB“, in cooperation with the European Policy Institute from Skopje and Belgrade Centre for Security Policy from Belgrade, with the financial support of the European Fund for the Balkans.

Draft agenda can be found here.