Introducing a legal obligation, not promisses

Transparency Sebia considers that publishing the contract about negotiating of state bodies not in any case should be an act of a goodwill of public officials, nor the deadlines for publishing should count on their media announcements and statements, but according to the legal obligations.

“Insajder” reminded that the governmental representatives changed the deadline that they gave for publishing the contract about Airport Nikola Tesla concession, that state signed with the French company. The first deadline was September 2018, and then the end of the year, and now it is announced that the contract will be published “in next few months”. New date, after Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, and right after the Minister of Finances Siniša Mali, now the deadline is given by Minister for Air Traffic Zoran Ilić.

In the meantime “Krik” broadcasts the details from one of the annexes of that contract, which is not published.

It’s a document “Minimal technical requests”, where is requested that the significant part of the money go to purchasing the land for expanding the airport, for the price of 100 euros per square meter.

Transparency Serbia considers that publishing the contract about negotiating of state bodies not in any case should be the subject of the goodwill of state official, nor the deadlines should be calculated regarding their media announcements. The problem of non-transparency of the Government’s management considering this concession, are not individual, but are systematic.

As Transparency Serbia already established in corruption risk analysis within the Law on public-private partnership and concessions, the current rules about data publicity do not secure the contract publicity and other relevant documents regarding this field. The rules of data publicity and so-called “register of public contracts” are regulated by regulation, which makes them easily changeable.

Regarding the current rulebook, publishing only individual elements of the contract, is foreseen, but not also the contract with the annexes.

Such a rule is absurd and it can be seen on this case of Airport concession: the list of contract annexes was published with a note which one of them are confidential, but even annexes without that note are not published.

The rule should be placed opposite – all of the documents should be public, except the information which are justifiably kept for safety reasons or which are business secret. Of course, neither determining business secrets can not be infinite.

As a secret should not be marked either one information from the contract, or accompanying document in which the obligation of state authorities are prescribed or explained. Change of the Law on public-private partnership and concessions, for the fight against the corruption, were planned for 2017, but until now there is not even a draft.