Are you interested in European integration? Do you lack knowledge about the EU, the challenges it faces and the direction of its development? Do you want to draw attention to issues that are significant for the future of Montenegro in the EU?
You are at the right place because the Institute Alternative begins with the first research phase of the project “You4EU – Citizen Participation 2.0”, which aims to bring together citizens and decision makers at the national and European Union level, as well as to encourage citizen involvement in the EU-related debates.
Design: Belgrade Open School
During December 2018 and January 2019, you will have the opportunity to pose questions about current issues to the decision makers at the level of Montenegro and the EU on Facebook and Twitter.
After collecting your questions, we will develop a questionnaire that will be forwarded to the relevant decision-makers in Montenegro and the EU during the second phase of the research in February 2019. This questionnaire will help us to get answers to your questions and to draw attention of decision makers to topics that are important to citizens.
Your questions and the answers we receive will serve as the basis for drafting the document “50 key issues for the future of the European Union”, due to be presented in late 2019 at the headquarters of the European Union, Brussels. Our partner organisations from Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia will participate in drafting this document, and they will also conduct the same research in their countries.
Project “You4EU – Citizen participation 2.0” is being implemented by Institute Alternative, in partnership with Belgrade Open School (Serbia), GONG (Croatia), PINA (Slovenia) and Access Info Europe (Spain). This project is funded by the European Union, within the programme Europe for citizens.
Montenegro is far from the frontrunner in the region based on the overall score in public administration reform (PAR) and comes next to last, based on the regional WeBER monitoring, said Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board of Institute Alternative (IA).
Montenegro comes first in the area of Strategic framework for public administration reform, but solely because of the formal inclusion of the civil society in the monitoring process of public administration reform through the PAR Council, which is an exception in the region.
In the Policy Development and Coordination area, Montenegro fares next to last, mostly due to the lack of information on the work of Government’s working commissions, as well as the practice of complete omission of information classified by the degree of secrecy from the agenda of the Government’s sessions. NGOs in Montenegro are the most dissatisfied in the region with the procedures, legal framework and practice for conducting public debates, as well as with the treatment of their comments and suggestions within the Government’s working groups.
In the Public Service and Human Resource Management area, key problems refer to accessibility of information on the civil service system, lack of the legally prescribed maximum percentage of temporary engagements and disproportionate burden for job applicants in public administration. The civil service remuneration system is not precisely regulated. The structure of the supplements to the basic salary, which could highly affect the final amount of the civil servants’ earnings, is too complicated, while its limits and procedures for awarding them are not always clear enough. This has contributed to the poor ranking of Montenegro in this area.
In the Accountability area, Montenegrin civil society is the most dissatisfied with how the exceptions to the presumption of the public character of information, which were further widened in the latest amendment to the Law, are defined and implemented, as well as with the poor implementation of the rules for proactive publishing. According to the perceptions of the civil society, NGOs in Montenegro most often face violation of legal deadlines for obtaining information and the access to information is the most costly in the region. Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information ranked worst, compared to its counterparts in the region.
In the Service Delivery area, Montenegro again comes next to last for poor results on the perception of availability and accessibility of public services. In the region, only citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have worst opinion than Montenegrin citizens when it comes to increasing time for obtaining administrative services in the past two years. Only 31% of citizens are aware that public administration offers electronic services, and out of the five percent of respondents claiming to use them, only 34% claimed they had managed to successfully obtain required service
Montenegro fared worst in the Public Finance Management area. Key issues refer to the lack of the budget execution reports, financial performance data and non-existence of the official budget for citizens at the national level. In all the other countries in the region, more data is available on the work of the internal audit, compared to Montenegro, while the work of the State Audit Institution is criticised for poor cooperation with the civil society, as well as for the content and structure of the audit reports.
Research was conducted from September 2017 to September 2018 in those aspects of public administration that citizens are mostly connected with, as well as those the most important for the work of civil society, and refers to the availability and accessibility of information and inclusion of citizens in decision-making.
The research is part of the regional three-year project “Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform (WeBER)”, funded by the European Union and co-funded by the Kingdom of Netherlands.
The overall goal of WeBER is to increase the relevance, participation and capacity of civil society organisations and media in the Western Balkans to advocate for and influence the design and implementation of public administration reform.
WeBER is implemented by the Think for Europe Network (TEN) composed of six EU policy-oriented think tanks from Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia.
Montenegro, according to overall score in public administration reform (PAR), is far from the leader in the region, since it ranks better only than Bosnia and Herzegovina – Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board of the Institute Alternative (IA), stated.
At the press conference “Montenegro and public administration reform – Where are we on the regional scale?”, organised by IA, he pointed out that the results of the research conducted in the six countries of the Western Balkans indicate that these countries face many shortcomings in meeting the EU accession standards in the area of PAR.
“Based on the results of our research, the findings show that the countries of the region, on average, achieved the most in the area of service delivery, which is followed by the area of public finance management. The category of policy development and coordination appears as the most critical area of public administration reform in the Western Balkan region, ” Muk said.
He said that, according to the overall monitoring of the progress in public administration reform, Montenegro is far from the leader in the region, and that it ranks better only than Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Comparatively, Montenegro has achieved the best results in the area of strategic framework for public administration reform, and the worst results in the area of public finance management,” Muk said.
In the area of the strategic framework for PAR, Montenegro achieved the best result due to the implementation of the consultation process in the preparation of the PAR Strategy, as well as because of the inclusion of the civil society in the process – Muk explained.
Besides that, the PAR Council was formed, which, in addition to representatives of the most relevant competent ministries and other administrative bodies, included two representatives of civil society. Montenegro has established a legal institutional framework for coordinating and involving civil society in monitoring the implementation of the strategy and PAR, which provided it an advantage over the countries of the region,” Muk said.
He said that the PAR Council lacks essential and substantive debates, and that the proposals and recommendations of the Council members from the ranks of NGOs are not respected and sufficiently considered.
“Our recommendation is that the Council reviews all documents and acts concerning PAR, instead of skipping the debate about the most important documents. The 2017 and 2018 amendments to the Law on State Administration were not considered at the Council, which does not contribute to the quality of the work of this body”, Muk noted.
He stressed that it is necessary to improve the practice of providing feedback from civil society, which concerns the process of adopting documents of strategic importance for PAR.
Dina Bajramspahić, Public Policy Researcher at Institute Alternative, said that Montenegro’s assessment in the field of Policy development and coordination is unsatisfactory, due to the number of problems burdening transparency of the Government’s decision-making.
“The complete lack of information on the work of four Government’s working commissions, as well as the practice of complete omission of information classified by the degree of secrecy from the agenda of the Government’s sessions contributes to this assessment. This institution completely avoids informing us about comprehensive points of the agenda under consideration”, she added.
She explained that reports on the implementation of the Government’s work program were reduced to the quantitative data on normative activity, with no indication of the effects of work.
According to her, almost all NGOs that responded to the questionnaire gave a negative response when it comes to transparency in decision making, the use of facts and data in policy making, and the quality of consultation with civil society.
“NGOs in Montenegro are the most dissatisfied, among all researched countries, with the procedures for conducting public debates, legal framework and practice, as well as with the treatment of their comments and suggestions within the Government’s working groups”, Bajramspahic said.
She pointed out that the survey of Montenegrin CSOs’ representatives indicates a negative attitude towards the quality of the legal framework for free access to information.
The most recent amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information have contributed to these attitudes. Following the proposal of the MPs from the ruling majority, these changes have introduced new important limitations to the access to information. According to the perceptions of civil society, NGOs in Montenegro often face violation of legal deadlines for obtaining information, and the access to information is the most costly in the region”, Bajramspahić said.
She said that the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data and Free Access to Information ranked worst, compared to its counterparts in the region.
“Most NGOs do not think that this Agency is successful in raising standards of access to information in Montenegro, especially when it comes to the effectiveness of the sanctions and the protection of the right to access information,” said Bajramspahić
Ana Đurnić, Public Policy Research at Institute Alternative, said that the research was conducted from September 2017 to September 2018, as part of the regional three-year project “Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform (WeBER)”.
She stated that Montenegro comes second to last compared to the countries of the region, in the field of Civil service and Human resources management.
“By conducting interviews with former job applicants in the state administration, we have come to the conclusion that procedures are extremely complicated. Citizens have difficulties finding jobs in public administration, because they need to pass a compulsory psychological assessment, and prepare expensive documentation required for applying for the job”, Đurnić said.
She also stated that the Central Human Resource Register is extremely unreliable and that it does not include, as she explained, complete data from all institutions at the central level.
“Personnel Plans, as the only source of detailed information on the structure of employees at the central level, are not published regularly, and Personnel plan for the previous year was not even prepared. These plans do not contain data on the number of temporary employees in state administrations, such as experts who are engaged through technical support projects”, Đurnić explained.
She said that Montenegro is second to last among the researched countries in field of Service delivery, and that 46 percent of the citizens surveyed agreed with the claim that the Government made efforts or initiated initiatives to simplify administrative procedures for citizens and businesses.
“Although most of the citizens agree that the efforts made have led to the improvement of services, only 45 percent agree that the time for obtaining public services has shortened. In Montenegro, 31% of citizens are aware that public administration offers electronic services, while 42% say it never uses them. Of the five percent of respondents claiming to use them, 34 percent said they had managed to successfully obtain required service”, Đurnić said.
She added Montenegro fares worst in the Public finance management area. One of the reasons is that Montenegro is the only country in the region that has no semi-annual report on the budget execution.
As explained, the Ministry of Finance publishes quarterly reports, without explanation about the purpose of the expenditure.
“Montenegro has no official budget for citizens, prepared by the Government or the Ministry of Finance, which is a practice in some countries in the region. Particularly positive are the assessments of Albania and Macedonia, which have a clear citizen-friendly presentation of the budget”, Đurnić said.
She pointed out that budget information is not available in an open format, which is another reason, as she stated, of poor ratings in the area.
According to her, citizens in Montenegro have the least publicly available data on the work of internal financial control, its functioning and results.
“When it comes to the work of the State Audit Institution, in terms of cooperation with civil society, we have noted the lack of communication channels with citizens, as well as the lack of consultation practice with NGOs in the process of identifying risks in the public sector,” Đurnić said.
Author: PR Centar
The WeBER project – Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform, is a three-year project implemented by the European Policy Centre (CEP) from Serbia, the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM) from Albania, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI BH) from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) from Kosovo , European Policy Institute (EPI) from Macedonia, Institute Alternative (IA) from Montenegro and European Policy Centre (EPC) from Belgium. The project is funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
They are all of the same opinion – the Special Prosecutor’s Office, the High Court and the Appellate Court – that an MP may be” put in prison for up to two months“ for refusing to testify as a witness. The Appellate Court did not decide on this matter, namely the invoking of the immunity granted to MPs, when it decided on the appeal lodged by Medojevic on 20 November 2018.
The Prosecution Service and the courts state that it is possible to put an MP in prison in this case, without having first lifted the immunity in the course of the appropriate Parliamentary procedure.
What then does this immunity safeguard from, if not from restraint of freedom, prison, detention, being put in prison?
What is the meaning of MP immunity? Presumably, it serves to enable the MPs to do their job freely, not fearing for their freedom. And their job is to speak, write and vote! Is an MP who is ”put in prison“ able to do his job? No! Does that undermine the societal value that the Constitution intended to safeguard? Yes!
Everyone has learnt now that, in addition to a sentence of imprisonment and detention, there exists also this ”putting in prison“. It seems to be a one-time measure aimed at crushing the spirit of a potential witness and compelling them to testify (in this case) in line with the Prosecution Office’s preferences. If the witness serves the two-month term, that’s the end of it. No testimony and no further sanctions.
The Montenegrin judiciary has devised a way to put an MP in prison in contravention to the Constitution and at the same time secure the ”legality“ of that action. Even some legal practitioners and lawyers fell for the confusion and collision between the Constitutional and statutory provisions and got convinced that something could be legal although it was not in conformity with the Constitution.
The sentence from the Roman law says ”who can do more, can do less“. However, there is no sentence saying that ”who can do less, can do more“. It does not make sense; it is neither natural nor legally right!
Because if a court may ”put an MP in prison“ for two months, why does then the Constitution provide that an MP may be detained only when caught in the act of committing an offence punishable by up to five years (!!!) of imprisonment.
How can non-compliance with the procedure, which is punishable by up to two months, constitute more solid grounds than commission of a criminal offence punishable by up to five years of imprisonment?
In its criminal-law essence and its contents, this case, where an MP has been taken to prison, is insignificant compared to all that Medojevic and his political allies have been charged with in other proceedings. It is therefore even more absurd that this case resulted in his ”being put in prison“, while in the other cases he remained protected, one way or another.
I believe that the makers of the Constitution did not anticipate that another law might mock a Constitutional provision and allow for an MP to be put in prison outside the Constitutional and Parliamentary procedures.
I also believe that the makers of the Constitution did not believe that punishment for refusing to testify might one day be imposed against an MP, contrary to the Constitution and the intention of its Article 86.
Still, regardless of the whole legal conundrum, it is not possible to correctly apply a provision from a procedural law while disregarding the provision from Article 86, in the specific case involving an MP.
It is therefore even more concerning that the Appellate Court, when deciding on the appeal, did not refer to the immunity invoked by the MP.
This reinforces the obligation of the Constitutional Court to stop this lawlessness.
The developments of the past few days cannot be understood without being aware of all that has followed since that afternoon of 16 October 2016: two court proceedings against MPs and leadership of the opposition Democratic Front for most severe criminal offences; public and political judgments being passed before the court and court proceedings; political party accounts being blocked; motions to lift immunity; incidents taking place in the lobby of the Parliament; threats being voiced in the media, in the Parliament and in the courtroom; the ”rattling“ of civil war, destabilisation, unrest; the political-judicial and media conflict which has turned personal and became a matter of spite which defeated the law and good taste, so that one side was able to materialise the threat and the other got to be on the receiving end.
Unfortunately, being aware of the context does not help reach an answer as to how long this is going to take and what effect it is going to have on the political, legal, social and media systems.
In conclusion – the message that the ruling regime is sending across to the MPs (but also to all the other critics) is that they have to take heed that their expressions do not cross the line between a value judgment and facts. Otherwise, they might be summoned to testify, and if the judicial branch of power finds they have failed to do so, then what awaits them is the night, police van, being put in prison, solitary confinement…
At a session of the Public Administration Reform Council, on November 30th , Stevo Muk, president of the managing board at Institute Alternative (IA), suggested additional improvements to the draft Law on Local Government Financing.
IA took part in the public debate on the Draft Law on Local Government Financing, by submitting 20 proposals for more transparency and accountability in financial management at the local level. The Ministry of Finance has accepted some of our suggestions, but it rejected those which would ensure the real pressure on municipalities to spend money lawfully and rationally, was rejected.
Therefore, today we have repeated our proposal that municipalities should publish analytical cards from all its accounts on a monthly basis, in the form prescribed by the Ministry of Finance, within a special section of its website. This obligation is already prescribed by the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns, but in a limited period. We believe that it should be introduced as a regular monthly obligation, regardless of the period of the election.
Fines for violations of the Law are not high enough and dissuasive. Ranging from 200 to 600, or 1000 to 2000 EUR, they do not correspond to the violations committed. The Law on Misdemeanors prescribes that responsible person can be fined with up to 4000 euro if the violation committed concerns the area of public revenues.
The Draft Law does not envisage in-year reporting on the execution of the budget during, thus depriving local assemblies and citizens from timely information on budget execution. Some municipalities have this obligation in their statutes, but it is necessary to legally introduce this obligation, through semi-annual reporting, in order to ensure the effective exercise of the oversight function of the Assembly. The semi-annual report must contain all three budgetary classifications, in line with the budget decision and the final account.
In order to encourage the development of internal audit and to increase its impact on the municipal level, we suggested introducing the obligation for local governments to submit a report on the work of the internal audit to the municipal assembly. It is necessary for local councilors to obtain basic information on the work of the internal audit, including the number of audits carried out, the number of recommendations made, the percentage of fulfillment of recommendations – all for the purpose of better information and more fundamental control over the execution of the budget.
We have also suggested that budget inspection reports need to be submitted to the municipal assembly.
The key incentive for drafting of this law is to meet demands of municipalities for increase in revenues. However, this should not come at the expense of the balance between rights and obligations. In other words, financial rights of municipalities shoyld correspond to their obligations for transparent and accountable financial management. During the 15 years of implementation of the current Law on Local Government Financing, municipalities have not done enough to convince us of the ability to manage their finances responsibly. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent irrational expenditures, abuse and corruption through a new law.
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In the Policy Development and Coordination area, Montenegro fares next to last, mostly due to the lack of information on the work of Government’s working commissions, as well as the practice of complete omission of information classified by the degree of secrecy from the agenda of the Government’s sessions. NGOs in Montenegro are the most dissatisfied in the region with the procedures, legal framework and practice for conducting public debates, as well as with the treatment of their comments and suggestions within the Government’s working groups.
