Belgrade,
14:26,
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Beta
Serbia's European integration and its position in the Council of Europe could be in danger due to the country's failure to implement recommendations from GRECO, the Group of States Against Corruption.
A dozen recommendations included in GRECO's June 2006 report have yet to be put into effect. The commission tasked with their implementation has met only twice, when the matter at hand was the urgent adoption of the Action Plan for the enforcement of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy.
Drago Kos, the president of GRECO, the Council of Europe's corruption watchdog, points out that Serbia has received binding recommendations that it has to implement before the year is out.
Noncompliance will result in Serbia being listed and treated as an uncooperative country. The first step will be quarterly reports on the country's anti-corruption efforts, and the outcome could be ejection from the Council of Europe.
"Only one country has been declared uncooperative so far, Georgia. I truly hope that Serbia will not follow in Georgia's footsteps," Kos tells us.
The recommendations, published last October, are somewhat detailed but could be implemented easily through the passage of legislation that is already finished and the introduction of an anti-corruption agency, according to Kos.
From 2000 to 2002, GRECO conducted its first evaluation of anti- corruption mechanisms in member-countries, followed by another round from 2002 to 2006.
The first round focused on fighting corruption and officials' immunity from prosecution, while the second targeted confiscations of assets derived from corruption, public administration, and companies.
Serbia, which has been a GRECO member since 2003, was subject to a cut-down evaluation that looked at all of the above factors. A report was produced in June 2006. The report has been available to the public since October that year following permission from the Serbian cabinet.
The document emphasizes that Serbia considers corruption a serious problem affecting the public sector, especially the judiciary, local government, customs, law enforcement, and healthcare.
In addition, it recognizes that steps have been taken to curb corruption and notes the existence of an anti-corruption strategy, work on an accompanying action plan, and judicial reform.
Some of the recommendations have already been incorporated into the legal system and introduced. The office of ombudsman has been created, the State Auditing Institution has been staffed, laws have been amended to introduce new investigative techniques, and a witness protection program has been set up.
While an action plan on the implementation of the National Anti- Corruption Strategy has been adopted as required, efficient implementation is lacking.
Many of the recommendations are supposed to be introduced by laws that are pending passage and amendments to existing laws. However, since Parliament did not sit for eight months in the period before and after the latest election, plus two months during the summer, the only material to reach MPs is the Civil Law Convention on Corruption and several additional protocols, signed two and a half years ago.
According to the GRECO report, Serbia needs to do the following: improve enforcement of the Public Procurement Law and provide training to civil servants involved in the process, provide transparency in the appointing and dismissal of judges, prosecutors and deputy prosecutors, and expand the powers of the special prosecutor for organized crime.
GRECO also wants Serbia to switch to prosecutor-based criminal investigations and secure better cooperation between the police and prosecutors in investigations. In addition, it urges constant training for police and prosecutors about corruption, temporary freezes of suspect transactions, and confiscation of assets in crimes related to corruption.
Also recommended is providing officials with training on implementing freedom of information laws, together with the introduction of an ombudsman and state auditing body, as well as expansion of the number of officials subject to conflict of interest restrictions.
Furthermore, GRECO wants the Law on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest amended in the way specified by an existing bill on the prevention of corruption.
The government has until the end of 2007 to submit a report on what they have done to implement the recommendations. In early 2008, GRECO will check to see exactly what has been done.
The Commission for the Implementation of the National Corruption Strategy and GRECO Recommendations is a temporary body established in lieu of a real anti-corruption agency. To date, it has met only twice. The first time was in late October 2006, and the second was in November of that same year.
Both times the agenda included the GRECO report, the adoption of the Action Plan, and putting together a list of action plans for every realm of government.
However, since elections were near, then Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic, the commission's chair, scrapped everything but the Action Plan, which was impossible to implement. The need for form was satisfied, but the supplementary action plans were never debated and without them, the Action Plan was on permanent hold. The GRECO report was not even mentioned. The commission has not met since and Minister Stojkovic is still its chair.
Reactions to the GRECO Report
Branislav Bjelica, who was a secretary of state in the Justice Ministry when the GRECO report came out last October, said that the report would determine how international financial institutions and foreign investors view Serbia. He added that the report confirmed the existence of political will to tackle corruption.
In his comment, Transparency Serbia Program Director Nemanja Nenadic listed the country's priorities as putting the ombudsman and State Auditing Institution to work. He warned that the state would find it challenging to implement mechanisms to protect whistle blowers and introduce measures to prevent holders of state office to take advantage of their former positions after stepping down.
Information Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic remarked that "it is very important for the state to adopt a serious and responsible attitude towards these recommendations and put them into effect as required. The deadline is the end of 2007 and we shouldn't kid ourselves that there is more than enough time and that we can make the same mistakes all over again."
Many experts felt that the recommendations were too mild. Some urged the state not to take them lightly even though many of them had already been implemented or at least introduced in draft legislation. Some of the most important recommendations are part of the Anti- Corruption Agency Bill, approved by the cabinet on Oct. 19, 2006, but still waiting to be deliberated by Parliament. Even though changes to the Criminal Code have introduced prosecutor-led investigations, implementation of these provisions have been put off.
Kos, who helped draft the Anti-Corruption Agency Bill, says it is one of the best pieces of anti-corruption legislation in the Balkans and maybe in Europe.
Commenting in reports that the foundations of the law could be reopened to debate, Kos stresses that there were problems during the drafting process concerning the agencies field of operation.
"I was convinced that we had overcome that and I can't understand why this is coming up again. We evaluated the practical and theoretical implications of every possible approach and chose the solution we thought was best," he adds.
Additionally, Kos stresses that while he does not want to speculate whether the bill's passage might have been put off to safeguard the interests of certain individuals or political groups, "there's no other explanation."
"The procedure is dated and that could have serious consequences for Serbia. GRECO is a Council of Europe body but our work is closely followed by the European Commission and EU and depending on what we say, Brussels adopts a stance in regard to candidate countries or countries that are on the verge of candidacy for EU membership," says Kos.
Kos goes on to say that fighting corruption is a political requirement for EU membership and that failure to comply with GRECO recommendations means that a country is not doing enough in that respect.
In addition, the GRECO president says he has not been in touch with Serbian officials regarding the recommendations. He is nevertheless prepared to come to Belgrade and help clear up any dilemmas as to what is expected of the country and who best to achieve that.
The Regulations and Reality section was made possible by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Mission to Serbia. The OSCE Mission is funding all articles posted on this site.
Regulations and Reality takes a look at the implementation of the National Strategy on Fighting Corruption, approved in December 2005, the enforcement of anti-corruption laws passed in the last five years.
It also focuses on the effects of these laws, their limitations, errors that have appeared, and planned changes.
Every article created as part of the project is available free of charge to individuals and media outlets visiting the Argus website. The editors of Argus assume full responsibility for the views and information contained in each article. The articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the organizations supporting the project.
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