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There is no sufficient progress in gender-responsive budgeting

The recommendations for improving gender-responsive budgeting include, among other things, supporting spending units for better formulation of gender-responsive and transformative goals and indicators, as well as better control of reports on budget execution, with a focus on the results achieved.

This was highlighted during the panel discussion ‘Program Budgeting through Gender Lens: What Have We Learned?’ organised by IA, with the support of the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights.

Among other recommendations for improving gender budgeting, presented by representatives of institutions, civil society organisations, and international organisations, the emphasis was on increasing the gender-sensitiveness of managers and coordinators for program budgeting through additional training. The Ministry of Finance was called upon to increase the control over the quality of budget execution reports concerning gender perspective. Additionally, there is a perceived necessity to amend the Budget and Fiscal Responsibility Law with provisions on gender-responsive budgeting.

Nikoleta Pavićević from IA presented the findings of the analysis ‘Program Budgeting in Montenegro: Contribution to Gender Equality or Just a Tick in a Box?’

“When delving deeper into the analysis of budget requests and budget execution reports, it is evident that program budgeting is not sufficiently developed, especially in the area of gender-responsive budgeting”, she stated.

This is reflected in the data demonstrating that for over 70% of the program budget goals, there is no data on how they contribute to reducing gender disparities. The insufficient gender sensitivity of the budget is also evident from the fact that, out of 87 indicators in the analyzed budget requests, only 2 are gender-responsive.

Luka Đuričković, the Head of the Directorate for Budget Policy, Program Budget, and Procedures at the Ministry of Finance, emphasized that, even though there is still a lot of room for improvement in the implementation of gender-responsive budgeting, he is satisfied with the progress made after three years of its implementation, especially because these are only the first steps. He highlighted that the 2024 budget proposal will be significantly more advanced in terms of gender-responsive budgeting, explaining:

“We have had intensive communication with spending units in this regard, and the current draft budget recognizes numerous activities that are gender-responsive, corrected, and improved.”

As a challenge, the Ministry of Finance recognizes the insufficient number of budget analysts who could monitor the quality of requests and reports from spending units, and currently, there are only 15 of them.

Marija Dragojević from the Secretariat of the Council for Competitiveness said that the topic of gender-responsive budgeting requires a horizontal approach involving all interested parties, as well as the recognition of the concepts of gender-responsive budgeting and gender-responsive statements in the law.

“The Secretariat has trained over 150 employees from spending units, including 15 trainers for gender-responsive budgeting who will work on enhancing capacities in this field,” said Dragojević.

Blažo Savković, a state auditor at the State Audit Institution, emphasized that the findings of their report on the audit of the effectiveness of implementing gender equality policies show that a certain number of spending units, which marked a portion of their budget as gender-sensitive, did not conduct appropriate analysis and assessment of its impact on gender equality.

“In practice, without gender analysis, it is not possible to define appropriate gender-sensitive goals or indicators to measure progress in achieving these goals,” concluded Savković.

“For the quality of the program budget, it is necessary to define the structure and establish responsibilities for budget development in spending units, especially when collecting and processing data needed for gender analysis,” he added.

Angelina Šaranović, the Secretary of the Committee for Gender Equality in the Parliament of Montenegro, shared that the budget for the year 2023 recorded an increase of 1.40% compared to the previous budget when it comes to allocations for reducing gender disparities. However, many programs are still labeled as gender-neutral in the submitted reports, which is not a good indicator. She also mentioned that it would be good to introduce a label indicating whether a program is gender-transformative. She concludes that the government should provide clear guidelines for gender mainstreaming in the capital budget, which is currently completely left out of the gender mainstreaming efforts.

Anita Stjepčević from the Center for Women’s Rights reminded us that the specific needs of those targeted by policies (women, girls, men, boys, and all other gender identities) are often insufficiently or not taken into account at all.

“Gender analysis and the measures developed based on them are a condition for good public policies,” she stated.

Anita also pointed out the need to enhance the gender literacy of the personnel working on program budgeting.

IA Team

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NGOs submitted proposals and priorities for public administration reform

A meeting of the National Working Group for Public Administration Reform was held in Podgorica, attended by representatives of the civil society and the Ministry of Public Administration.

At the meeting, discussions revolved around the 2024 priorities of the Ministry of Public Administration and proposals from representatives of non-governmental organisations for improving public administration reform. Additionally, a Draft of guidelines for the implementation of a design thinking approach regarding governance issues at the local level was presented. Proposals on how to enhance the Draft were also discussed. 

The meeting was attended by ten representatives from eight non-governmental organisations, as well as four representatives from the Government of Montenegro and the Ministry of Public Administration. Marija Hajduković, the General Director for Strategic Planning in Public Administration, International Cooperation, and IPA Funds at the Ministry of Public Administration, spoke on behalf of the government.

Representatives of the civil sector have agreed that it would be beneficial to restart public discussions on the work program of the government and ministries for the upcoming year 2024. The issue of regulating recruitment in public enterprises and institutions, as well as the necessity of introducing special organisational units for monitoring and evaluating public policies, was also highlighted as an important item for further consideration. The adoption of amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information, the Law on Salaries of Public Sector Employees, and the Law on Non-Governmental Organisations were also prioritised.

Representatives of non-governmental organisations also pointed out the lack of effective oversight of the implementation of standards for electronic accessibility of websites and highlighted that the internet presentations of municipalities are not harmonised. Therefore, non-governmental organisations have called on the Ministry of Public Administration to follow good examples of some of the Western Balkan administrations and to offer the draft of the next report on the implementation of the Public Administration Reform Strategy for comments to interested citizens, citizens’ groups, and non-governmental organisations.

To involve the non-governmental sector and citizens in the public administration reform process, a draft of guidelines for addressing local-level public administration issues, with a focus on the needs of citizens (applying the design thinking approach), was presented to the representatives of NGOs at the meeting. This was part of the call for project proposals within the framework of the WeBER 3.0 project program. Those interested in submitting proposals were invited to identify a specific problem related to local governance or public administration reform and approach its resolution through seven key steps while adhering to the principles of sustainable development.

Western Balkan Enablers for Reforming Public Administrations – WeBER 3.0 is a project with the main goal of further empowering civil society organisations to contribute to a more transparent, open, and accountable administration that is citizen-focused. The aim is to achieve an administration that is more in line with EU standards in the Western Balkans region. The project is funded by the European Union, represented by the European Commission, and co-financed by the Austrian Development Agency and the Ministry of Public Administration of Montenegro.

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European Commission Report’s findings for 2023 as expected

Dragana Jaćimović, public policy researcher at the Institute Alternative, participated in an online discussion organised by the European Policy Centre (CEP) on the topic of the European Union (EU) enlargement package for 2023 and the very functioning of democratic institutions in the countries of the Western Balkans.

The participants also discussed the recently published reports of the European Commission, as well as recommendations for the further path of the countries of the Western Balkans towards institutional reform and fulfilling the conditions for further integration into the EU.

“The findings of the latest report of the European Commission were expected, where similar criticisms as in previous years were repeated. There were no backslidings, nor the break through when it comes to the assessment of progress during the last year”, concluded Jaćimović.

Answering the question about Montenegro’s readiness to become the 28th member of the EU by 2028, Jaćimović said that it remains to be seen how the new 44th Government will work towards achieving this priority, which is listed as one of the main goals in the future work. She pointed out that membership in the EU had been, at least declaratively, a priority of the previous governments, but that not enough concrete actions and results were achieved.

“Stagnation of the process is reflected in a fact that interim benchmarks for Chapters 23 and 24 have not been met even after 10 years since they were formulated. This affects the overall progress in negotiation process, since other chapters cannot be provisionally closed before meeting interim benchmarks in the rule of law”, Jaćimović stated, and added that the latest European Commission report gives clear indications of what needs to be done in the following period, and what is expected from the new Government is to form a stable and functional negotiation structure as soon as possible.

“Reaching an agreement on key positions in the judiciary is the main precondition for reforms in the judiciary. This depends solely on the political will of the parties, which is a first step for meeting interim benchmarks in the rule of law”.

She also pointed to the new recommendation of the European Commission related to the elimination of the risk of infiltration of organised crime and corruption in the judiciary, which is especially important when taking into account the numerous cases initiated by the Special State Prosecutor’s Office and in which the enormous infiltration of organised crime in state structures.

The discussion was opened by the ambassador of Italy in Serbia, Luka Gori, and Director-General for EU Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR) at the European Commission Gert Jan Koopman.

In addition to Jaćimović, comments and findings were also presented by panelists from the Western Balkan countries: Strahinja Subotić (CEP), Simonida Kacarska (European Policy Institute – Skopje), Arbëresha Loxha Stublla (Group for Legal and Political Studies – Prishtina), Haris Ćutahija (Foreign Policy Initiative – Sarajevo), Daniel Prroni (Institute for Democracy and Mediation – Tirana).

You can watch the discussion at the following link.

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Political parties hold the key to unfreezing the road to the EU

In the annual report, the European Commission noted a lower average assessment of progress, recognised that only one recommendation was fully fulfilled within the fundamentals cluster, while the average assessment of readiness remained the same.

The absence of effective political dialogue and constructive approach by political parties was particularly highlighted in this year’s report, with the conclusion of a lack of direction on EU accession issues.

As part of the fundamental chapters, in the area of “functioning of the judiciary”, the assessment of the lack of progress was repeated as in 2021, making it the worst rated aspect in this year’s report. This is largely due to the fact that the work of Constitutional Court was blocked in the period from mid-September 2022 to the end of February 2023, which is covered by the report.

In terms of progress, chapters 5 (public procurement), 12 (food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary control) and 30 (external relations) were rated lower this year: “some level of progress” compared to “good progress” in 2022. On the other hand, chapters 7 and 14, on intellectual property law and on transport policy, were rated somewhat better: “good progress” compared to “limited progress” in the last year’s report. Thus, the average rate of readiness is 3.12, compared to 3.15 in 2022.

Average rate of readiness by year

In terms of readiness, neither backsliding nor progress was noted, so the average rate remained the same (3.12). To remind, since 2015, the European Commission has been applying two levels of assessment – “readiness” and “progress”. The first level refers to the assessment of the overall state of play in the areas covered by individual chapters, while the second level focuses on the time-bound assessment of the progress made during twelve months.

The absent progress in EU integration is mirrored in the reiteration of old recommendations, but also in a more direct formulation of recommendations, especially in those areas where more decisive steps have been missing for a long time, such as media legislation. Within the cluster of fundamental chapters, only one of last year’s recommendations, which refers to the establishment of a strategic framework for public administration reform, through the adoption of the Public Finance Management Reform Program, was fully fulfilled. Therefore, in the chapters which condition the overall progress in the negotiations, only one minor improvement was observed, although it still does not guarantee the delivery of tangible results.

We especially highlight as an important recommendation, which requires the preparation of a road map for the reform of state – owned enterprises, the improvement of management and supervision of their work, and the development of objective criteria for the selection of their management bodies. New and equally important is the recommendation that refers to the need to address the risk of corruption and infiltration of organized crime into the institutions of justice and law enforcement agencies, through preventive measures and a more decisive judicial response to detected cases.

Similar to previous years, frequent reorganizations and high turnover in the public administration were criticized, and the lack of improvement of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees was particularly emphasized. The European Commission particularly emphasized that, instead of working to improve eligibility criteria for recruitment in public administration, which were downgraded in early 2021 through the changes to the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees, the parliamentary majority proposed changes to the Law on Local Self-Government, which would also degrade these criteria at the local level. We, at the Institute Alternative, have previously warned about these attempts. The European Commission underlines that changes to the Law on Access to Information are still pending, although “the process of preparation and consultation has been going on for years.”

As expected, and similar to earlier evaluations from the non-paper on chapters 23 and 24, the European Commission recognized the alacrity in initiating cases of high corruption and organized crime under the new Chief Special Prosecutor. However, the contrast in the number of initiated cases compared to the almost non-existent balance of final judgments was also pointed out.

See how the European Commission evaluated the progress in certain chapters this and in previous years:

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Discussing the repression of corruption in public procurement with the Police

Police efforts in cases concerning corruption in public procurement were discussed at the meeting – the first one in a series of meetings on the performance of repressive institutions in the fight against corruption in public procurement.

On November 6, Institute Alternative (IA) organised a meeting attended by representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Police Administration. 

During the closed meeting, we discussed the so far results of the Police Administration, current capacities for conducting investigations, and cooperation with the prosecution and other state bodies. Moreover, the focus of the conversation was on the obstacles to conducting effective investigations in this area and recommendations for improvement in the area.

As a result of the meeting, IA will prepare an overview of the Police’s results in the fight against corruption in public procurement.

The meeting was organised within the project „Procurement under the spotlight – making watchdogs work!“, funded with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Serbia and Montenegro, within the MATRA programme. The project aims to empower and motivate watchdogs to combat corruption and undue influence in public procurement.

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Parliamentary Oversight of the Security Sector and the Process of European Integration

Besides the civilian and internal oversight, and the judicial oversight of the legality of work, parliamentary oversight is an important aspect of control and improvement in the security sector. Apart from being responsible for ensuring legal assumptions for the functioning of the security sector by enacting laws and strategies, the Parliament of Montenegro exercises control and oversight over the elements of the security sector such as the security forces (the Armed Forces and the Police) and the intelligence and security sector (the National Security Agency), all with the aim of controlling transparency, efficiency and accountability.

The importance of the control role of the Security and Defence Committee and the Parliament becomes even greater in the light of recent events in the security and defence sector, specifically the arrest of high-ranking police officers and a member of the Committee due to their alleged connection with organised criminal groups.

It was precisely the Parliament of Montenegro that was recognised in the Action Plan for Chapters 23 and 24 as one of the key institutions charged with implementing activities that lead to the fulfilment of priorities: from appointments in the judiciary, to the revision of the legislative framework in the field of media and the like. However, as noted in the last report of the European Commission for Montenegro, the Parliament was not up to the task when it came to political dialogue and constructive engagement aimed at strengthening parliamentary oversight in the accession process.

Bearing in mind the importance of parliamentary oversight for achieving transparency, efficiency and accountability of the security sector, as well as the role that the Parliament can play in encouraging reforms in this sector, this analysis aims to examine the use and effectiveness of current mechanisms of parliamentary oversight of the security sector and provide recommendations for their improvement, consequent acceleration of the fulfilment of obligations from Chapters 23 and 24, and the fulfilment of political criteria in the part that concerns the functioning of democratic institutions, especially the Parliament.