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YOU4EU policy recommendations

The recommendations in this document are the result of the research activities and discussions which were organised within the “YOU4EU – Citizen Participation 2.0” Project.

The research activities were implemented from December 2018 to July 2019 and included a campaign on social networks aimed at collecting citizens’ questions, a compilation of stakeholders’ answers to these questions, and the publication “50 Questions from YOU to the EU” which summarised key citizens’ concerns and provided an overview of recommendations for the improvement of citizen participation.

Within the Project, four public events were organised, one in each of Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Serbia, between September and December 2019. Participants in these events had the opportunity to exchange views on the main challenges for the establishment of an inclusive and transparent society at the EU and national levels.

During the implementation of the YOU4EU Project, we found an urgent need to act to improve transparency and participation. This document sets out the main conclusions, gathered during the project activities in all five participating countries, and a series of specific recommendations for the European Union and national governments.

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Recommendations for Improvement of Police Work

The key problem is human resources management, ie hiring and giving promotions which is not based on merit, knowledge, skills and personal abilities relevant to police work, said Dina Bajramspahić, Institute Alternative’s policy researcher

In the context of the deteriorating of security in our country, we recall of some of the issues that we have been pointing out for years, and which essentially reflect on the quality work of the police. Realistically speaking, work of the police today is much better than it was two years ago and many steps have been taken, especially in the area of international police cooperation. However, progress is not yet made in several important areas such as hiring and promotion, training and education, internal organisation.

The key problem is human resources management, ie hiring and giving promotions which is not based on merit, knowledge, skills, personal abilities relevant to police work. For decades, Montenegrin police have functioned as a service which gathered low-skilled unemployed persons. In long run, this is reflected on the quality of work and dissatisfaction of heads of departments who, despite the huge number of officers, always complain on the lack of employees to manage the actual police tasks. In other words, although there are many police officers, there are only a few ‘’real’’ police officers.

Almost nothing has been done in order to identify what are the competencies needed for performance of police work, to direct those who are willing to work in Police, as well as those who are already in service, to develop and improve those competencies. Instead, exactly the opposite is being done. In order to accelerate recruitment, at the same time while we have educational program at the Police Academy, which lasts for two years, we have courses which lasts three months in order to urgently ‘’push’’ 90 new police officers to the Police. Officers from these, ‘’urgent’’ courses, are not well trained for police tasks, nor are familiar with human rights and use of force. And if it is already possible to train high school students to be police officers, then the Police Academy, which costs citizens million and two hundred thousand a year, should be completely closed. Even the Police Academy’s two year program is not as good as it should be. We saw that when one of the best students of this Academy, freshly hired in Police, was filmed in excessive use of force when performing police duties. However, instead of further improving the Academy and instead of working more persistently and thoroughly with the academics to grow the values of strictly respecting the laws, the plan seems to be completely opposite. The intention is to build out of the present Police Academy, as an independent institution, an organisational unit within the Ministry of Interior Affairs, that is used for fast courses. By advocating such solutions, Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Police do not show that they take seriously the gravity and importance of police work, especially in the contest of the use of force.

Cheap courses for the low-skilled officers to be are even more negatively reflected on life prospects of those officers. Officers with a high school degree do not have many opportunities to achieve promotion in service and cannot occupy more than one position. In the long run, they will become dissatisfied with low incomes. This led to the issue of ‘’fake college diplomas’’ in the Police, which was discussed even on Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee. Because the police system is by definition ‘’career’’ oriented, often lifelong, officers who could not move up in hierarchy, often turn to easier solutions.

Although the annual budget of the Police Administration is huge, 73 million of euros, and the most of this goes on salaries, this amount is shared to too big number of officers. This amount of money is more than enough to create a pay system that would make all of the employees satisfied. But to make things even worse, in accordance with the MOI’s Rulebook on Organisation and Internal Systematisation and Rulebook of Police Administration, the number of officers with police authorities will continue to grow, and the same ‘’cake’’ will be shared with more and more new colleagues. However, the essential question is how much of these new colleagues really will contribute to improving of the security situation in Montenegro and whether anything will be improved. The practice of giving police powers to those who those powers do not use, just to increase their salaries, is devastating because they cost the system and do not contribute to solving issues on the street. This is also the issue mentioned before: we have many administrative officers with a police badge and only a few real police officers. Such non-strategic decisions must be ended as soon as possible.

Such officers, who are unprepared for police work, come to work where they don’t find well-developed internal procedures and operational standards of act. In these cases, they mostly depend on their colleagues and learning things along the way, adopting the previous ways of work, which sometimes are not the best ones. Much more attention must be paid to this, especially having in mind that even in minor oversights police officers may put themselves and the others in danger.

The new Rulebook of the Police Administration was made contrary to all the principles of good organisation of the police service. Instead of consolidation of organisational units and reducing the number of heads of departments, in order to improve the efficiency and sharpen the lines of responsibility, exactly the opposite was done. Already lumbering and sluggish system is further complicated. Such situation will make communication and coordination between organisational units even more difficult in the long run.

Finally, while the Police is stumbling, criminal organisations are up to date. Upgrading police forces with new technologies, specialised staff with knowledge in IT, banking, forensics, identifying violence against children and women, cybercrime is something that must be considered. Of more than 4,000 police officers, just some over 800 of them have high level of education and less than 300 have higher levels (including the Academy), according to 2015 data.

The new Law on Internal Affairs, which has been in process since 2015, and which is due to be adopted by the Government by the second quarter of year, is a good opportunity to make many steps ahead relating to many problems in Police. The question is whether decisions will be made on the basis of professional or political parameters.

Author: Dina Bajramspahić, public policy researcher at the Institute Alternative

Article was originally published in the daily newspaper Vijesti, as well on the Vijesti’s portal.

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Only three ministries announced public discussions planned in 2020

Only five ministries have fulfilled legal obligation to publish the work programme, while only three ministries have published a list of acts to be subject of public discussions in 2020.

Year after year, the Government and ministries do not improve in creating conditions for public participation in policy-making.

First of all, the Government established the Work Programme for this year at its session held on 6. .Same as previous years, Government failed to prepare this document in a transparent and participatory manner. Institute Alternative (IA) has recommended for years that this is the most important act for determining the priorities of the Government’s work and it should be open for public’s suggestions. Consultations should be organised no later than December for each coming year and gather ideas from citizens about what the Government should address in the upcoming year.

However, apart from the fact that it is impossible to influence priorities of the Government’s work, it is not even possible to get acquainted with plans and responsibilities of the ministries in a timely manner.

On this day (6. March) out of 17 ministries, only five of them published their work programme for this year in accordance with the obligation of the Law on State Administration. Ministry of Public Administration, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs, Ministry of the Interior published their work programme, while Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism published Three Year Work Programme 2019-2021, in October 2019.

The situation is even worse when it comes to the list of laws and strategies to be to be subject of public discussions during this year. To this date, only three ministries have published the list – Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs, Ministry of Public Administration and Ministry of Justice.

The Decree regulating public discussions stipulates the obligation of the ministries to publish on their website and eGovernment portal the list of laws and strategies to be subject of public discussion in their preparation, a brief explanation of the need to pass the law or strategy and other information relevant for the preparation of the law or strategy. All this should be published within 15 days after adoption of the work programme.

All of the above points to the lack of interest of ministries in enabling the public to make a good contribution in making policies that are important for all citizens.The first prerequisite for consulting the public is planning and informing the public on priorities and obligations. Considering the massive rejection of all the comments received from the interested public, it is clear why, from year to year, the motivation of citizens to participate in public discussions is diminishing.

IA Team

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Call for Training Course – Gender Mainstreaming of Public Policies

Gender equality and public policies: Basics of gender mainstreaming

Institute Alternative (IA) announces

public call
for applications for training course on Gender Mainstreaming of Public Policies

Institute Alternative invites civil servants, decision-makers and representatives of civil society to apply for Gender mainstreaming of Public Policies training course.

Through Gender Mainstreaming of Public Policies training course, participants will strengthen their understanding of policymaking as a set of strategic approaches and processes that can be used to achieve gender equality. The aim of the training is to bring the gender perspectives closer to those who work on public policy-making, considering EU and UN standards.

The training course will be conducted by an independent consultant Višnja Baćanović, and it will include:

  • Understanding of gender perspective;
  • Intervention levels, tools and steps that can be used in gender mainstreaming;
  • Practical examples and situations encountered by the participants which will ensure that what is learned on training course can be applied in practice.

Candidates who are interested can send their application to email adress info@institut-alternativa.org, with subject ”Application for training course on Gender Mainstreaming of Public Policies” by 16 March 2020, by 5 PM. You can send additional questions to the same email address, and on the results of your application we will inform you by 18. March 2020.

Training is planned to be conducted on 26 March 2020, at the Hotel Sheraton in Kolašin, with covered transportation and accommodation costs.

The application must consist of short motivation letter, stating with why integration of a gender perspective into public policies in Montenegro is important to you, and what public policies you deal within your business. With the motivation letter, A CV should also be submitted.

The training course on Gender Mainstreaming of Public Policies is organized within the project ’’More Than Quotas: Gender Mainstreaming and Public Policies in Montenegro”, implemented by financial support of the Ministry for Human and Minority rights.

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Local is also public: Lessons learned from the “reforms”

In the public administration reform process, local self-governments are lagging behind the state-level administration in the fields of accountability, transparency and human resources management. This analysis therefore seeks to look at the local self-government reform as addressed by the official strategic actions, and to indicate the gaps in the existing approach to local-level reforms.

The key strategic framework in this area consists of the 2016-2020 Public Administration Reform (PAR) Strategy, which contains a special chapter on local self-government, and the 2018-2020 Public Administration Optimisation Plan. The Strategy set eight targets related to local self-governments.

This paper will try to establish to what extent these targets have been met. Section one provides an overview of the results of the optimisation, i.e. adjustment of staff numbers at the local level to meet the targets. Section two provides an overview of local government finance, aiming to check the extent of fulfilment of the financial indicators set in the relevant strategic documents.

Lastly, the paper suggests that excessive hiring and unsustainable public finance, which have been identified as burning issues in the existing strategic documents, remain priority challenges at the local level; however, on the basis of available experience, the paper highlights the lessons learned and provides recommendations for better implementation of reforms at the local level.

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Army and Police Officers Right to Attend Public Assemblies

The Law on the Army and the Law on Internal Affairs allow officers of the Army and Police to attend the protest, party and other political assemblies without wearing uniform. This was highlighted by NGOs Human Rights Action (HRA) and Institute Alternative (IA) in a letter sent to the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Montenegro, Mr. Dragutin Dakić, regarding his recent statements that he did not approve of the participation of army officers at the processions and the information that the General Staff of the Montenegrin Army summons Army officers for questioning for attending them. With regard to other activities, such as communication on social networks, the NGOs proposed that legal prohibitions on “political activity” and “expression of political beliefs” be specified by the law.

In the letter, we also emphasized that the Article 60 of the Law on the Army allows Army officials to attend protest, party and other political gatherings without uniform. Although this law generally prohibits “the expression of political beliefs” (Article 18, paragraph 2), as well as the Law on Civil Servants (Article 9), no law defines these terms. Therefore, even if the processions are considered not only a religious assembly but a protest gathering of a political character, members of the security forces may again attend such a gathering under the condition that they are not in uniform.

International human rights treaties allow states to restrict freedom of expression and assembly for members of the security forces (European Convention on Human Rights, Art. 11, para. 2, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Art. 21, para. 2) when it is necessary for achieving legitimate aims, especially preserve political neutrality of those forces. However, states are required to specify this restriction appropriately by law, so that officers of the army and police may accordingly foresee how the law will be applied and harmonize their behaviour. In their legislative practice, states treat this issue differently, some less and some more restrictive.

In Montenegro, Article 9 of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees obliges civil servants and state employees to carry out “work” in a politically neutral and impartial manner, in accordance with the public interest, and to “refrain from public expression of their political beliefs”. The Law on the Army also prescribes, in principle, “the duty of military officers to refrain from publicly expression of their political beliefs”, but also explicitly permits the attendance of “protest or political gatherings and other non-military activities”, provided that these gatherings are not attended in uniform (Art. 60). It is almost the same situation with the Law on Internal Affairs, which forbids officials of this Ministry and Police from membership in a political party and political activity (Article 94, paragraph 2), but, like the Law on the Army, permits the attendance of “party and political assemblies” if they do not wear a uniform (Article 94, paragraph 3).

The terms “public expression of political belief” and “political activity” are not defined by any law, while attending “protest or political assemblies” or “party and political assemblies” by the Law on the Army and the Law on Internal Affairs is allowed without wearing a uniform, hence such behaviour cannot be considered unlawful.

However, it remains unclear whether other activities, such as posting photos of processions on social networks and commenting on them, can be considered prohibited by “expressing of political beliefs” and “political activity”, since these terms are not defined.

IA and HRA appealed to the Chief of General Staff to advocate for specification of these legal terms, so that these laws, which restrict human rights of officers, meet the “predictability” standard which requires that the law limiting human rights to be sufficiently precise that could predict how it would be applied and to prevent arbitrary i.e. the widespread application of restrictions (see, for example, the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in case Rekvenyi v. Hungary, 1999).

This especially because the Law on the Army, as a disciplinary offence, prescribes “violation of the regulations on the prohibition of political activity” (Article 157, paragraph 1, item 23) and provides for disciplinary punishment in the form of preventing promotion, salary reduction, removal from duty in the Army, etc. The Code of Military Ethics also does not provide clarification, but reiterates the legal provision that service in the military is politically neutral (paragraph 5, item 1), obliges to refrain from any conduct that may have a negative effect on the Army’s reputation and relations in the Army (para. 5, item 6), and prohibits the presence or participation only in those activities and events that promote intolerance towards other persons or discrimination, send hate messages or insults or express intolerance, and which are publicly and ethically unacceptable (item 8).

We also draw attention to the fact that within the project “Voice Your Rights!- Expanding Space for Free Assemblies” implemented by IA and HRA with the support of the European Union through the Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, Program for Montenegro 2018, we will continue to monitor freedom of peaceful assembly in Montenegro.

Letter sent to the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Montenegro, Mr. Dragutin Dakić can be read here.

Signatories of the letter:

Tea Gorjanc Prelević, Executive Director of the NGO Human Rights Action
Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board of the NGO Institute Alternative