The Chairman of the Board of the Regulatory Agency for Energy and Regulated Utilities (REGAGEN), Branislav Prelević, called on the parliamentary Administrative Committee to eliminate the shortcomings of the public competition for the appointment of the president and two members of that regulator because, as he claims, it does not list the criteria.
"We expect that, in order to ensure the legality of the election of the president and members of the Board, you will eliminate the shortcomings of the public competition in the appropriate legal procedure," Prelević stated in his address to the president of the Administrative Board, Jelena Nedović.
On January 21, the Assembly announced a public competition for the appointment of the president and two members of the REGAGEN Board.
Prelević reminded that the Energy Law, which was in force at the time of the announcement of the competition, among other things, stipulated that the public competition contain conditions and criteria for the selection of candidates for the president and members of the Board.
"A review of the public competition determined that it contains the prescribed conditions, as well as the word 'criteria' in the sentence Conditions and criteria for appointments. However, the text of the competition itself does not state which criteria are involved," Prelević emphasized.
He pointed out that the quoted conditions are not the same as the criteria and, as he claims, semantics are inexorable here.
"The criteria, which are not present in the public competition, serve to ensure transparency and objectivity of the appointment procedure between several persons who meet the competition requirements. The criteria, ultimately, also serve to ensure the independence of REGAGEN, as one of the postulates of its institutional position," explained Prelević.
He said that the Energy Law unequivocally stipulates that the criteria for selecting candidates for the president and members of the Board must be contained in a public competition.
"Their absence in the public competition cannot be compensated for by their prescription in any other act. And here the principles of the Montenegrin legal system are inexorable," concluded Prelević.
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