These two laws made it to the Parliament, i.e. they are published on the Parliament’s website together with rationale for their adoption. Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement, although adopted at the Government’s session a week before these two, still did not make it to the Parliament, i.e. they are not published at the Parliament’s website”, said Đurnić
Institute alternative (IA) wonders why some laws get to the Parliament faster than the others and stresses that the Proposal to the Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement, although Government adopted it on May 18, has not been yet sent to the Parliament and is not publicly available at the Parliament’s website, with rationale for its adoption.
Public policy researcher at IA, Ana Đurnić, stated for “Vijesti” that the Government adopted Proposal to the Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement at 26th session on May 18, and that at the 27th session, among other things, it adopted Proposal to the Law on Amendments the Law on the Protection of Cultural Property and Proposal to the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code.
“These two laws made it to the Parliament, i.e. they are published on the Parliament’s website together with rationale for their adoption. Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement, although adopted at the Government’s session a week before these two, still did not make it to the Parliament, i.e. they are not published at the Parliament’s website”, said Đurnić.
This is particularly problematic, she said, because Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement published on the Government’s website “do not contain rationale, so we do not know how the Government justifies adoption of some very controversial solutions”.
“Among other things – increasing the value of procurement for which there is no obligation of launching a public tender (up to 15.000 euro for gods and services and up to 30.000 euro for works), which reduces transparency and public scrutiny, but also suspends the protection of bidders’ rights, since the Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures will not have a role in these procurement, i.e. there will be no possibility of filing a complaint to the Commission for these procedures”, stressed Đurnić.
Recently, Institute alternative publicly warned that “despite many years of the European Commission’s insistence on improving the openness of the public procurement system in Montenegro, the Government is constantly closing it for public, discretionary deciding on procedures for spending more than 400 million euro of citizens’ money annually spent on public procurement”.
