Transparency – Serbia proposes priorities for fight against corruption in Serbia 2016-2020

Transparency – Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International-TI) sent list of 15 priority activities for the new Parliament and the new Government, to all political parties that participate in the parliamentarian elections, with invitation to include them into their programs or to potentially state reasons against it. Almost all of these priorities were included into recommendations of TS in the previous election processes, but were not implemented, even when they became part of the strategic acts or were transformed into legal norms. 

Among other, Transparency suggested rules on transparency of decision making process – that no law should be adopted without organizing public debates, that law should regulate lobbing (attempts of influence on decision makers) and that Government should publish information from its sittings, including conclusions that often decide on important issues. TS puts special emphasis to necessity of providing transparency of information related to signing of interstate agreements that exclude implementation of domestic laws, thus citizens and MPs that approve such arrangements can realize whether the potential benefits are larger than the damage that will undoubtedly occur due to absence of competition.

National Assembly, according to TS, should demonstrate its preparedness for performing of its supervisory role, regulated by the Constitution, through cooperation with independent state organs. At the beginning of mandate, Assembly should reconsider the reports of Ombudsman, Commissioner for Information, Anticorruption Agency, SAI and other organs, to undertake measures for resolving of problems they indicated and to elect two of the missing members of the Board of the Agency. By TS opinion, it is necessary, for performing of supervision and implementation of anticorruption laws, that Assembly regularly holds accountable Ministers and other managers of the organs that do not respect obligatory decisions of independent organs. Ministers and other managers must be accountable for implementation of obligations from the strategic acts, that turned out not to be taken seriously even by the Governments that adopted them. Assembly should establish the practice of considering the reports of Government's activities, and these reports should be more firmly related to plans of work and program budget.

Considering revealing and punishing corruption, besides protection of whistle-blowers, according to TS, changes of the Criminal Code are necessary to provide obligatory  releasing of criminal accountability bribe giver that couldn't otherwise exercise its rights in reasonable deadline and that reports the case, as well as introducing of the criminal act of „illicit enrichment“. Equally important is more active approach in investigating corruption by the police, prosecution and other organs, including using of special investigative techniques. It is necessary to remove any confusion about the role of certain organs, in coordination and in prosecution of corruption.

TS reminds of some legal obligations that are there for years but the Government ignores them, which testify of lack of political will to perform professionalization of public sector. It refers to appointing of „officials in post“ on the basis of competition, that, according to the Law on State Servants, should be ended even between 2006 and 2010, as well as on election of the directors of public enterprises by the same principle, which became legal obligation 3,5 years ago. In both cases „a.d.“ status prolongs indefinitely, that benefits political party control.

Our other recommendations refer to measures for termination of practice of buying media influence or wasting of public resources through spending money on promotional activities of public enterprises and other authority organs, full implementation of the Public Procurement Law, greater transparency in deciding on election, advancing and accountability of judges and public prosecutors for their work, as well as accountability of members of SJC and SPC. We also indicated to significance of maintaining of unity of legal system and legal security, decreasing risk of corruption in regulatory and financial interventions on the market, implementation of public sector reform, necessity that Government regularly considers reports and recommendations of the Anticorruption Council which wasn't the case so far, as well as most important provisions that should be taken into consideration in the upcoming Constitutional change. 

TS proposal: http://www.transparentnost.org.rs/images/dokumenti_uz_vesti/Priorities_in_fight_against_corruption_in_Serbia.docx