A year of unfulfilled obligations

Most Serbian citizens have a negative opinion of the government's achievements in suppressing corruption and they do not expect any concrete results in the next three years -- this according to research conducted in June, which was presented on Dec. 9, on occasion of  International Anti-Corruption Day.

Since June, government representatives have done little to fulfill GRECO's recommendations and tasks from the Action Plan for implementing the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, other than to say that the political will exists beyond all doubt.

It is only for the last week of 2007, as BETA learns, that the government has an express first step planned, or at least the beginning of a first step: at its Dec. 27 meeting, the government will make changes to the committee in charge of carrying out the Action Plan. The body, which has met only twice at the end of 2006, is still headed by former minister Zoran Stojkovic.

The Committee's Status

In the meantime, the government has issued contradictory statements regarding the status of a key anti-corruption institution, the Committee for Protecting Bidders' Rights, which is the first barrier against possible corruption involving government purchases and the Public Procurement Office itself. The Parliamentary Committee on Legislation has recommended that the Committee for Protecting Bidders'  Rights be abolished and that the Public Procurement Office become part of the Finance Ministry.

However following these events the Finance Ministry stated that both the Procurement Office and the Committee for Protecting Bidders' Rights should remain independent bodies. "The bill on government purchases envisages that the Office and Committee be independent of the executive branch of government and that the criteria for electing the president and members [of these bodies] be made more stringent so as to increase professionalism and integrity," State Secretary Slobodan Ilic told BETA.

The Action Plan and National Anti-Corruption Strategy explicitly request the ensured independence of the Committee for Protecting Bidders' Rights from the executive branch of government. The Strategy envisages that regulations regarding public procurement be improved and strictly applied, namely through setting up an efficient control mechanism for judging the purposefulness and justification of planned purchases, and by introducing a mechanism to oversee how these purchases are realized.

Over a year ago, prior to the elections, the Committee adopted an Action Plan which turned out impossible to apply. At the time, Stojkovic accused those members of the committee which requested that the Action Plan be more detailed -- listing exact duties and overall deadlines, depending on the fulfillment of previous conditions -- of hindering European Integration. A general Action Plan was then adopted, and it was concluded that all state organs and ministries will produce their own plans. The Committee did not meet again, and a year later the Action Plan's deadlines came and went without the ministries and state organs which were assigned duties having been notified.

The Action Plan

As the year 2007 elapses so do the deadlines for the realization of some fifty tasks which state organs, institutions and ministries accepted after the government adopted the Action Plan for implementing the National Anti-Corruption Strategy.

The problem, however, is that most of these bodies and ministries were not even told they had obligations to fulfill. At some ministries - such as those of education, finance, and state management - BETA was unable to receive an answer as to who was responsible of making sure that tasks from the Action Plan were carried out, or whether the ministry was monitoring what has been done, and what yet awaits.

Part of the Action plan could not be implemented because a large portion of duties were assigned to the anti-corruption agency, which was never formed. The law on the agency was instead revoked for further debate.

The agency was supposed to introduce clear and objective criteria for judging the government's success in combating corruption, to work, in collaboration with all organs, on adopting and implementing special action plans for fighting corruption in those areas which are most prone to corruption, and to analyze regulations with respect to their anti-corruption consistency.

It is a wide span of tasks which have not been performed: from the above mentioned strategic, general duties, to the very concrete, such as regulating the forms which will be available at all offices and through which citizens will submit complaints of suspected corruption.

It has been impossible to learn from the government why the obligatory posting of all appointments and removals from office, along with the criteria i.e. reasons, has not been honored. Also unclear is whether state organs are periodically submitting reports on the implementing of anti-corruption measures under their jurisdiction -- which is their prescribed duty under the Action Plan -- and if they are, to whom.

With the law on the anti-corruption agency not yet adopted, and the implementation of the Criminal Proceedings Code put off, recommendations made by GRECO, the European Council's anti-corruption monitoring body, have also been left unfulfilled. As BETA has learned, the report on implementing these suggestions has been prepared and will be sent out before the Dec. 31 deadline, but the earliest time GRECO's recommendations can be applied is mid 2008.