On December 12, IA participated in the Round Table ‘Law on Government – Open Issues,’ organized by the Ministry of Public Administration in cooperation with the Association of Lawyers of Montenegro.
In addition to our participation in the Working Group for drafting the Draft Law on Government, during this Round Table, we once again presented some of our suggestions on what else needs to be further improved in this important act.
The revised version of the Draft Law on Government, compared to the previous one that more precisely defined the number and names of ministries, only prescribes the upper limit for the number of ministries (15). Despite this, it includes 7 mandatory ministries (justice, defense, interior, finance, foreign affairs, health, and public administration). However, additional explanations about the criteria that were crucial in determining these mandatory ministries are still missing.
IA advocates for a more permanent organization of the Government, providing necessary flexibility in implementing the exposé and government work program through ministries without portfolios.
We also welcome the decision to adopt our proposal to impose a ban on new appointments for a Government whose mandate has expired, since the previous version distinguished between the two types of appointments (“postavljenja” and “imenovanja” in Montenegrin). The current ban encompasses all public officials, which has been the IA’s recommendation from the very beginning.
We have consolidated these and other recommendations in our publication ‘For a Better Law on the Government,’ where we emphasized, among other things, the need to improve the transparency of permanent and ad-hoc government bodies, introduce mandatory elements of the Government’s opinion on draft laws initiated by MPs, verify the integrity of government members and their advisors, and how the handover of duties should be conducted.
