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Judges of the Constitutional Court to Resign

On the occasion of the decision of the Constitutional Court by which that court revoked as unconstitutional its previous decision on the election of Judge Desanka Lopičić to the position of “presiding judge”, NGOs Human Rights Action (HRA), Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS), European Association for Law and Finance Association (EALF), Institute Alternative (IA), Institute for the Rule of Law (IVP) and Network for Affirmation of NGO Sector (MANS) consider that judges Desanka Lopičić, Hamdija Šarkinović, Dragoljub Drašković and Mevlida Muratović, who voted for the unconstitutional decision in January and persisted on it for 10 months, should resign and no longer hold any public office. We find it inappropriate that after 10 months of unconstitutional action they continue to be authorised to decide whether something is in accordance with the Constitution or not.

We suspect that the goal of creating the function of a “presiding judge” was actually to keep Judge Desanka Lopičić, close to formerly ruling political party Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) by all means in the leading position during the election year, although she in particular, who had previously served as president of that court, should have been precluded from being in that office. Ms. Lopičić was elected a judge of the Constitutional Court on the proposal of the President of the State, Filip Vujanović, the candidate of the Democratic Party of Socialists.

The majority of the four mentioned judges have been preventing the election of the president of the court from being put on the agenda for months. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court was passive and silently observed how the outgoing Government adopted and implemented controversial and constitutionally problematic decisions related to epidemiological measures on the fight against the coronavirus and the electoral process, which caused discrimination, violation of equality and restriction of human rights and freedoms.

The Constitutional Court is continuously hampered with political influence, and as such cannot produce the necessary integrity of that high institution that should stand in defence of the protection of human rights and the rule of law.

We remind that already on February 5, our six non-governmental organisations sent a detailed letter with arguments in which we appealed to all judges of the Constitutional Court to immediately repeal the disputed decision on the election of the “presiding judge”, for the same reasons cited by the same court ten months later.

The Constitutional Court did not respond to our letter or change its position until recently, despite criticism from the European Commission in a “non-paper” in June and finally in a report on Montenegro published on 6 October.

Lack of impartiality and independence of the Constitutional Court cannot benefit anyone, especially not a state whose accession to the EU directly depends on trust in the work of its institutions

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IA and HRA: Appeal to Urgently Provide the Right to Public Gatherings

Non-governmental organisations Human Rights Action (HRA) and the Institute Alternative (IA) requested from the current Minister of Health, Mr. Kenan Hrapović, who chairs the National Coordination Body for Communicable Diseases (NCB), to urgently amend the order banning public gatherings, in order to provide citizens the right to protest in a way that does not undermine public health.

HRA and IA pointed out that the current Order for taking temporary measures to prevent the introduction into the country, suppress and prevent the transmission of the novel coronavirus (“Official Gazette of Montenegro”, 110/20 of 14 November 2020, 112/20 of 24 November 2020) which completely prohibits outdoor gatherings, is not in accordance with international human rights standards and the Constitution of Montenegro, because the state of emergency has not been declared. We pointed out that the Constitutional Court of Germany in April this year lifted a complete ban on public gatherings and stated they must be provided for a limited number of participants, who wear masks and maintain physical distance.

HRA and IA expect the Minister of Health to urgently amend the mentioned Order and provide the right to protest, without waiting for the Constitutional Court of Montenegro to decide on the initiative to examine the constitutionality of the Order, as that would be wasting precious time.

The environmental activists from the Civic Initiative Let’s Save the Rivers of Montenegro and residents of the villages of Rečina and Bare Kraljske, who have been protesting for the past four months to prevent the construction of mini-hydropower plants on the rivers Skrbuša, Čestogaz, Ljubaštica and Crnja, have informed us that the police have warned to prosecute them for violating NCB measures. They organized protests of up to 15 participants, who wore masks and kept their distance.

In order to prevent their right to peaceful protest gathering from being violated by possible arrest and prosecution, we asked Minister Hrapović to react urgently. We have also informed the Deputy Head of the Basic State Prosecutor in Kolašin, Ms. Maja Šćepanović, about our appeal to the minister.

On the following links you may find the letters in Montenegrin sent to the Minister and to the Basic State Prosecutor in Kolašin.

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Freedom of Assembly Monitoring Report

December 2019 - September 2020

The 2016 Law on Public Assemblies and Public Events introduced major novelties with regard to freedom of assembly in Montenegro. Freedom of assembly is a right guaranteed to citizens under the Montenegrin Constitution. Tt makes an integral part of the foundation of a democratic society and is indivisible from freedom of expression. It can be considered to constitute a collective expression of view concerning an issue that is the cause for the assembly.

The launch of implementation of the project titled “Voice Your Rights! – Expanding Space for Free Assemblies”, implemented by the Institute Alternative (IA) and Human Rights Action (HRA), coincided closely with the beginning of the largest protests in the history of Montenegro. Furthermore, the onset of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, four months into project implementation, also affected the freedom of assembly. These circumstances heightened the need for independent monitoring and situation assessment, in the aim of protection of civil rights.

Despite the extraordinary circumstances, at least 898 assemblies occurred during the reporting period; that actual number was probably even higher, given that assemblies were frequent, large and often organised without advance notification. To illustrate the scale of increase, let us mention that, after only a few assemblies took place in 2014, the figure for 2015 (30 assemblies) was reported by the institutions as a major step forward.

This Monitoring Report aims to identify both positive and negative tendencies in relation to public assemblies and to provide recommendations to improve the current situation. The first Monitoring Report considers the freedom of assembly over the nine-month period, from December 2019 to September 2020. The next one will cover the subsequent nine months, concluding with May 2021.

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President of the Parliament Welcomes the Continuation of Cooperation with IA

President of the Parliament of Montenegro Aleksa Bečić today met representatives of the Institute Alternative – Stevo Muk, President of Managing Board, Milena Muk and Marko Sošić, public policy researchers.

Bearing in mind many-year long cooperation between the Parliament of Montenegro and the Institute Alternative, President Bečić expressed conviction that the good practise would be continued during the new parliamentary term as well.  In an open dialogue, he referred to numerous activities of the Institute carried out within parliamentary programme and welcomed their engagement in monitoring the Parliament in the part of its control and oversight role.

Representative of the Institute informed President Bečić about current activities and expressed interest to cooperate with the Parliament and the responsible parliamentary working bodies through future projects. They stressed that the parliamentary support was exceptionally important for promoting the recently launched project “Parliamentary Oversight for Better Management”.

In this context, the interlocutors expressed readiness for further improvement of cooperation and noted that the efficient work of the Parliament was of key importance for further progress of Montenegro in the EU accession process.

Source: Parliament of Montenegro

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Traces of Ministers in Suspicious Public Procurement (II)

Warm and safe – Bošković 

From Pljevlja, through Nikšić and Podgorica, to Ulcinj and Budva, the business of two Nikšić companies which deal with the provision of security for property and individuals is connected with the former Minister of Defence and the positions he was in charge of.

Former Minister of Defence Predrag Bošković is considered to be one of the longest serving ministers, who covered various ministries during the three-decade rule of the DPS. In only the previous eight years, Bošković had been in charge of three departments. From 2012 to 2015 he was the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare. He took over the Ministry of Education in the first half of 2015 and managed that ministry until the elections in 2016. He then took over the post of Minister of Defence and remained there until the change of government after the elections in August 2020.

On behalf of the state, between 2009 and 2012, he headed the Board of Directors of the Coal Mine in Pljevlja. Since then, the business of the Nikšić-based company Vector Security (since 2018 called Vector System Security (VSS)) has been associated with his name. Their founder and owner is Ratko Popović from Nikšić, but Minister Bošković resolutely denies any personal connections with these companies.

“Bošković brought that company to Rudnik“, the former manager of the Pljevlja-based company told us during this research.

Publicly, former workers of the Nikšić-based bankrupt company Bauxite Mines connected Bošković with Popović’s company last year, after VSS became the owner of former union-owned land in the centre of Nikšić, with an area of 18,622 square metres. According to the available databases, no direct connection is actually visible, but there are a number of coincidences that, in the end, may not be just coincidences.

“If I had connections with that company (VSS – author’s note), it would be in the official data, in the register of ownership, as well as in my card for the registration of property,” Minister Bošković wrote in his response.

As Minister of Defence, he selected this company  to provide security for the Army and its property for years. Thus, for years now, Popović’s company has been guarding the property of the Valdanos military complex in Ulcinj. The contract for Valdanos’s security costs at the beginning of 2018 was worth €65,067 and, at the beginning of 2019, €68,690. For this year (2020), Bošković signed a contract with the same company on 17 January to secure the Valdanos property for €58,776.90 – on average, over €5,000 a month.

At the beginning of 2020, Bošković signed an agreement on the delivery and installation of video surveillance systems at the facilities of the Ministry of Defence and the Army throughout Montenegro, through three parties, for a total of €306,170.64. On 6 April 2020, he signed an agreement for the maintenance of video surveillance, an anti-burglary system and access control for €27,300. Previously, in November 2017, he had signed an agreement on the delivery of video surveillance equipment with VSS worth €14,415 for the needs of the Health Centre of the Security Forces in Podgorica. Also, on 13 March 2018, he had signed an agreement on the maintenance of video surveillance with VSS worth €14,612.85.

As the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, on 1 May 2014, Bošković signed an agreement with Popović’s Vector Security on the provision of physical and technical security services for facilities and persons in the Centre for Accommodation of Asylum Seekers. The value of that agreement over 12 months was €99,011.81 or about €8,251 per month. While performing the function of Minister of Education, in August 2016 he signed an agreement with VSS on the provision of physical security services for the building of the Ministry of Education, the Institute for Education and the Examination Centre, over 12 months, for the amount of €14,962.58.

Finally, Vector System Security also provided security for the shareholder’s assembly of the company “13. Jul Plantaže” held on 25 September 2020. This brings us to the story of Predrag Bošković’s entrepreneurial activities.

Authors: Mikan Milošević and Zoran Radulović 

Text is originally published in weekly newspaper Monitor, available here (in Montenegrin).

This text has been prepared within the project “For the Better Use of Public Money!”, implemented by the Institute Alternative with the financial support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The opinions and views presented in this text do not necessarily reflect those of the Embassy.

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Hidden economy in the Western Balkans 2020: Trends and Policy Options

Hidden economy in the Western Balkans 2020: Trends and Policy Options

The negative effects of the hidden economy are numerous – low funding and quality of public services, no healthcare and pension coverage, maternity or annual leave. Informal practices also breed unfair competition and corruption, hamper regular enterprises from growing and innovating, and create problems with regard to access to finance. Informality leads ultimately to wage and purchasing power reduction and eventual losses of state revenues. The European Commission (2019) adds to the adverse effects of informality the increasing job insecurity and the lower safety at work.

SELDI’s Hidden Economy Index reveals that the hidden employment has increased in five out of six Western Balkans countries. Serbia is the only country which shows a decline since 2016, while Kosovo* remains the country with the highest hidden employment share. According to 45% of the businesses in North Macedonia and 72% of those in Albania, corruption is the most important factor for the existence of the hidden economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has shed new light on the problem. Lockdowns imposed by governments during the pandemic have created a rapid spike in unemployment, thus increasing the risk of people seeking undeclared work. What is more, enterprises employing undeclared workers will not be able to benefit from the emergency and recovery government measures, IPA funds, or the immediate EU support for the Western Balkans. The lack of healthcare coverage of fully undeclared workers poses a serious threat. According to SELDI’s data, 60% of the employed in Kosovo* claim to have no healthcare insurance, while every tenth employed in the Western Balkans region has no social security coverage.