Far-reaching Parliamentary conclusions on reporting of independent organs

Transparency Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International) welcomes adoption of so far most comprehensive conclusions of parliamentary committees on the occasion of independent state organs' reports. Parliament should, if it wants to fulfil its constitutional role of supervision over work of executive authority, regularly monitor implementation of these conclusions. Absence of monitoring is main reason why Parliament one more time obliges the Government to take on measures stated in the conclusions from June 2013.

Reports of state organs, that often times identify systemic problems and unpunished absence of will to implement preventive anti-corruption regulations in recent years were not sufficiently monitored. This year reports were considered with lot more public and deputies’ attention, which is good, however what turned out to be bad is the fact that media interest was largely encouraged with ungrounded critics on the account of independent organs and violation of parliamentary procedure.

Final result is the best so far. Parliament adopted conclusions of Committee for Judiciary and Management, Committee for Financing and Republic Budget and Control of Public Assets Spending and Committee for Minority and Human Rights on the occasion of Anti-corruption Agency, Ombudsman, Commissioner for Information and State Audit Institution’s reports[1]. Having in mind that independent organs pointed out to specific cases of violation of laws whose implementation they monitor, as well as to systemic problems, are important source of information for performing of supervisory and legislative role of National Assembly. National Anti-corruption Strategy recognizes significance of this matter and envisages introducing of legal obligation of the Government to report on implementing of these parliamentary conclusions (deadline – May 2015)[2].

For this supervision to bring results, by our estimation, Parliamentary conclusion must be as specific as possible, which was missed in the case of SAI, because conclusion of Committee for Finances states only general support to activities of this body. On the other hand, conclusions of Committee for Minority and Human Rights and Committee for Judiciary contain specific suggestions for changes and monitoring of regulations. That is how, among other:

By our opinion the most important is the fact that Assembly obliged the Government to report on implementation of all these measures by December 6th this year. Related to that, no less important is that the Parliament should determine what is implemented from its last year's findings and recommendations[3]. Namely, many problems to which independent organs are indicating repeat from year to year. We remind that the Assembly, in last year's conclusion, among other, invited the Government to simplify and facilitate implementation and protection of civil rights before authority organs, to consider initiatives submitted by Ombudsman and proceed by stated recommendations, to undertake measures for implementing obligatory decisions of Commissioner for initiating procedures against officials that haven't performed their obligations, to propose Law on Protection of Whistleblowers, changes of the Anti-corruption Agency Law, free access to information of public importance and Ombudsman for more efficient protection of civil rights, as well as measures to secure harmonisation of anticorruption regulations, to adopt by-law acts on secrecy of data and to provide full conditions for work of independent organs.

Circumstance that parliamentary elections were held in the meantime does not represent sufficient excuse for non implementing  the tasks set up in June previous year. Therefore, hope remains that the Parliament will monitor performance this year and that supervision will show some results.

Transparency – Serbia

Belgrade, 7 June 2014