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IA Representative at the Conference in Skopje

“Chapter 23 – Pandora’s Box or Key for Good Governance?”

Public Policy Researcher at the Institute Alternative, Ana Đurnić, spoke about the effects of the establishment of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption in Montenegro at the conference “Chapter 23 – Pandora’s Box or Key for Good Governance?”.

The conference was organized by the Institute for European Policies (EPI) and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Macedonia in Skopje on June 5, 2018, as the closing activity of the project “Network 23+”.

Ana spoke on a panel with the main topic of the fight against corruption, with a special emphasis on the establishment and work of preventive institutions in the anti-corruption system. In this regard, Ana spoke about the establishment and work of the Montenegrin Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, its capacities and legal regulation. She particularly stressed the public’s dissatisfaction with the work of this institution so far, whose primary task was to create a momentum for weak reforms in the area of ​​preventive fight against corruption.

“Instead, the management of the Agency decided to start from scratch, abolish everything that happened before January 2016, when the Agency started working, and to establish new practices and law interpretations,” said Đurnić.

Ana stressed that the lack of results in the work of the Agency is clear for the citizens as well, and that they do not have great trust in this institution.

“According to a public opinion survey conducted in November 2017, one quarter of citizens have not heard about the Agency at all, while 38% of them believe that it treats ruling parties officials preferentially. Contribution of this institution to the fight against corruption is not recognized by 44% of Montenegrin citizens. If we do not count those citizens who have never heard of the Agency, as many as 57% of those who heard about the Agency do not consider it has contributed to tackling the corruption issue, “said Đurnić.

Ana talked about other problems in the work of the Agency as well, especially in the area of preventing conflict of interest and control of asset declarations of public officials.

“The two processes which are connected and complementary and are not placed “under the same roof” by chance, are artificially isolated from one another in the work of the Agency. The Agency does not use income and assets declarations of public officials and civil servants to proactively determine the existence of a possible conflict of interest and this presents a big issue” said Đurnić.

The need to deepen the reforms under Chapter 23 was highlighted during the conference, in order to promote the rule of law in the Republic of Macedonia. In this regard, the Government emphasized the need for cooperation with civil society organizations from Network 23.

The conference was opened by the director of the Institute for European Policy, Simonida Kačarska, the president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Gordan Kalajdziev and the High Public Officials of the Republic of Macedonia – Zoran Zaev, Prime Minister, Bujar Osmani, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, Renata Deskoska, Justice Minister and Saša Bogdanović, mayor of Municipality Centar.

Read more about the work of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption in the areas of control of assets declarations and conflict of interest in our publication “Instead of Reforms, Status Quo: Control of Assets Declarations and Conflict of Interest in Montenegro”.

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Government’s Relentless Pursuit of Control over the Public Broadcaster

The discussion announced following the initiative for dismissal of Director General of RTCG, Andrijana Kadija, is a confirmation of DPS’s intention to regain absolute control over RTCG and stop its transformation into public broadcaster, despite warnings from the European Union.

Photo: Vijesti

We remind that systemic, continuous and unprecedented attacks on RTCG began in December last year with unlawful dismissals of two members of the RTCG Council, Goran Đurović and Nikola Vukčević. Unlawful dismissals of the two Council members, implemented by the Administrative Committee and led by DPS MPs, Ljuiđ Škrelja and Marta Šćepanović, have clearly demonstrated that DPS will resort to any means in order to ‘cleanse’ the RTCG from those who are not to the party’s liking and to reclaim the media in question as a party bulletin. For this purpose, direct executors of government orders have been installed in the Council, who subsequently employed an obvious tactic of several months long undermining of the management authority, interfering in the RTCG functioning and ultimately voting for dismissal of the Director General.

New RTCG management, headed by Andrijana Kadija and Vladan Mićunović, remained dedicated to initiated reforms of the national broadcaster, despite the strong resistance they have experienced internally and external pressures. This does not work for DPS and the Government, because DPS and the Government only accept subordinate institutions, organisations and individuals without integrity, willing to undertake illegal activities for the benefit of the ruling party without any objections. Mimo Drašković, Council Member, belongs to this group and confirms his loyalty to DPS by attending party conventions as well. He finally tabled the initiative to dismiss the Director General, which was imminent for several months, thus fulfilling his role in this body.

In previous months, the work of RTCG has been actively obstructed by the Government of Montenegro as well, which has postponed the signing of the Public Broadcasting Services Agreement between the Government and the RTCG and the approval of the RTCG Collective Agreement, which was also noted with concern in the EC Report as part of political pressures on RTCG.

Dismissal of Andrijana Kadija would confirm that DPS and the Government will not allow establishment of institutions without party influence, that they are determined to directly derogate all institutions that make a step towards independence and that they do not leave space for persons with integrity to do their job in a managerial position, namely, that they knowingly undermine all pillars of a functional rule of law.

By dismissal of Kadija, the authorities would open up the space for the European Commission to seriously consider activating the balance clause, that is, to halt further provisional closing of chapters until substantial progress is achieved in the area of the rule of law, where freedom of media and freedom of expression are among crucial issues. The EC Report states, inter alia: ‘Initial positive developments on RTCG’s editorial independence and professionalism were challenged by instances of undue political interference and political pressure on its Council…’, with the overall assessment that Montenegro made no progress in the reporting period and expressed concern about the situation in RTCG. Therefore, dismissal of Kadija would represent a show of force and power at the expense of the rule of law, which calls for activation of balance clause more than the recommendation of four NGOs.

Ana Novaković, Executive Director, Center for Development of Non-Governmental Organisations (CDNGO)
Daliborka Uljarević, Executive Director, Centre for Civic Education (CCE)
Stevo Muk, President of MB, Institute Alternative (IA)
Zlatko Vujović, President of MB, Center for Monitoring and Research (CeMI)

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Our Administration: Transparent Interviews – Key to Integrity of Recruitment in Public Administration

In order to improve the undermined trust in recruitment procedures in public administration, we call on the Government to improve the transparency of conducting interviews with candidates for positions in the state administration and the local self-governments.

Implementation of the new Law on Civil Servants and State Employees starts from 1st July, and it will to a large degree be properly applied to the local level.

Drafting of a key bylaw – a decree regulating testing procedures for future state and local officials, is underway.

According to the latest draft version of this act, results of testing procedures will to a greatest degree influence selection of cadre, and when scoring results of testing procedures, results from the oral interview will account for 30%. Holding of structured interviews is also foreseen for candidates for senior management positions (eg, secretaries, general directors in ministries) and heads of authorities.

We believe that, in particular for higher positions, it is necessary to provide reliable evidence of a conducted interview, which will in many cases have a decisive role in recruiting new cadre.

We remind that citizens do not trust that competences are a key criterion for employment in public administration.

On the contrary, according to the results of the public opinion survey conducted by the Ipsos Agency for Institute Alternative in February 2018, citizens believe that employment in public administration is most commonly done through friends and family (62%) and political (56%) connections.

Hence, we call on the Government and the competent Ministry of Public Administration to provide audio recording of interviews in the application of the new legal framework, because without an evidence of a conducted interview in the form of an audio recording, which should be presented to all candidates as a precondition for holding the interview, integrity of the testing procedure will remain questionable.

Also, bearing in mind the importance of professionalization of senior management and heads of authorities, who are also public officials, it is necessary to provide full transparency in the recruitment procedures for these positions.

In this regard, we recommend establishment of a practice of proactively publishing minutes from conducted interviews with candidates for the most important positions in public administration.

Representatives of Our Administration network members:

Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board, Institute Alternative
Daliborka Uljarević, Executive Director, Centre for Civil Education
Ana Novaković, Executive Director, Center for the Development of Non-Governmental Organisations
Nazif Velić, Executive Director, New Horizon
Milka Tadić – Mijović, President of the Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro
Mikan Medenica, Executive Director, Natura
Mirsala Tomić, President, Association for the Development of Civil Society
Marina Vuksanović, President, NADA – Herceg Novi
Milena Đurović – Stanojević, Executive Director, Active Zone
Mustafa Canka, Executive Director, Ul info
Aleksandra Pavićević, Executive Director, Association of Youth with Disabilities of Montenegro
Slobodan Franeta, President, the Lucha Institute
Maja Raičević, Executive Director, Women’s Rights Center
Ljiljana Raičević, President, Women’s Safe House
Marta Anđelić, President, Adria

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Toward a better administration in Montenegro: Good progress or modest preparation?

This report provides an overview of the situation in the key areas of public administration reform in Montenegro. It presents new information related to the implementation of this important reform, which we first reviewed in the report titled “Public administration reform: How far is 2020?” from June 2017.

The first half of the implementation term of the 2016-2020 Public Administration Reform Strategy (PAR Strategy) was marked by slow implementation of the activities, mainly reduced to regulatory amendments and drafting of analyses. The activities that were supposed to lead to greater citizen participation in decision-making, electronic data exchange in the delivery of administrative services and more managerial accountability through delegation of authorities did not get implemented within the set timeline. In addition to the objectives and activities included in the Strategy, amendments to the Law on State Administration were adopted, relieving the state authorities of the obligation to conduct public consultations on the public policies from the fields of defence and security and annual budget, or in emergency, urgent or unforeseeable circumstances, or “when a law does not regulate an issue in an essentially different manner”. This sustained the trend of taking action, which - in spite of the strategic framework aspiring to a more open administration – amounted to regression in certain areas.

In principle, no substantial progress has been made in the public administration reform, while regression has been noted in the regulation of public debates and free access to information. The level of citizens’ trust remained unchanged in 2017 and 2018. A considerable share of our recommendations refers to deletion of recent legal provisions, rather than improvement of practices – this is a true reflection of the course of public administration reform since the adoption of the new Strategy in 2016.

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Municipalities in Trial: Between Lack of Accountability and Protection of Local Interests

The subject of this study is the protection of property rights at the local level in Montenegro.

Just like the central state, local governments appear before courts more frequently as defendants than as plaintiffs. The most frequent type of charges brought against them involve work-related rights. These can also be dealt with via mediation, but information on the number of mediation cases or settlements in work-related disputes is not proactively published. Data privacy rules did not allow us to get the municipal level information from the Agency for peaceful settlement of labour disputes. Overall, there is little transparency in this area: reports on the work of municipal bodies in charge of legal representation and protection of property are not proactively published.

In the upcoming period, Ministry of Finance should regulate the rules for reporting on spending on court-related nes and insist on uni ed and transparent presentation of amounts budgeted for court-related costs as a condition for the Ministry’s approval of local self-governments’ budget decisions. This could be accomplished by amending Regulations on the single classi cation of accounts for the Budget of Montenegro, budgets of extra-budgetary funds and budgets of municipalities. Local self-governments should regularly published analytical cards, and municipal bodies in charge of representation and protection ought to proactively publish report son their work, and inform the relevant authorities in local self-governments about the state of court disputes in order to ensure timely initiation of negotiations with plaintiffs and more frequent use of alternative settlement procedures. State Audit Institution ought to conduct a thematic audit of expenses incurred through court proceedings by all local self-governments.

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Trainings on Corruption Proofing Held in Budva, Podgorica and Zagreb

Public Policy Researcher at Institute Alternative (IA), Ana Đurnić, held trainings on Corruption Proofing of Legislation.

Two trainings were held in Budva and Podgorica on April 24th and 25th, for representatives of Montenegrin local self-governments, ministries and the Parliament of Montenegro, while the third was held in Zagreb on May 22nd and 23rd for representatives of state institutions of Kosovo.

Ana spoke about the role of civil society in assessing corruption risks and presented the experience of Institute Alternative which has been engaged in these activities for more than ten years. The participants were presented examples of comments that IA prepared for a series of Montenegrin laws. Ana also presented the experience of IA representatives at various stages of drafting regulation, such as participation in working groups for preparing regulation, participating in public discussions on draft regulation, submitting initiatives for amending regulation to the MPs in the Parliament of Montenegro etc.

The trainings in Budva and Podgorica for representatives of Montenegrin institutions were organized by the Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative (RAI) in co-operation with the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (APC).

Tilman Hope also spoke at the trainings where, through practical examples, he introduced participants to the institute of corruption risk assessment in laws, its purpose and significance, so that representatives of state administration and local self-governments can recognize the mentioned risks when drafting normative acts in their everyday work.

Head of the Department for Monitoring Regulation and Giving Opinions on Anti-Corruption Regulation, Grozdana Laković, presented participants with the Methodology on Anti-Corruption Assessment of Laws, drafted through the RAI Regional Project. Laković presented in detail the Opinions given by the Department, which represent an initiative to the legislator or proposer to adapt legal norms so that their implementation eliminates corruption risks. Also, expert of the Regional Cooperation Council, Radu Cotici, emphasised in his presentation the importance of tackling corruption risk in legal norms, and that joint work and coordination of various subjects, both international and domestic – national, can lead to desired results and progress in the overall reforms that Montenegro is dedicated to.

Training in Zagreb for representatives of Kosovo’s state institutions was organized by RAI in cooperation with UNDP Kosovo and the Anti-Corruption Agency of Kosovo, in the framework of the RAI Regional Program for Strengthening Anti-Corruption Authorities and Civil Society for Combating Corruption and Organised Crime and Contribute to the UNCAC Review Process.

The main goal of the training was to find the best model for performing analyses of corruption risks in regulation by the Kosovo Anti-Corruption Agency.