The European Commission (EC) has never been harsher in its assessments of the results of the Montenegrin authorities, and the Government should understand this as a warning, according to the opposition and the civil sector. In Chapters 23 and 24 of the EC working report on the current situation, it is stated, among other things, that independent institutions must be protected from any interference and encouraged to fully use their powers.
"This is a kind of "red alarm" for the authorities, because it is the strongest assessment that we could read in any EU document so far in the accession process", believes Ana Vujošević, coordinator of the European integration program at the Center for Civic Education (CG).
The EC report points out that only initial results have been achieved in the area of suppressing high-level corruption and some forms of organized crime, and warns that limited results have been achieved in areas such as asset confiscation, money laundering, solving cases of attacks on journalists and freedom of the media. .
General Secretary of the Civil Movement URA Mileta Radovanić believes that Brussels was particularly critical of the results of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption.
"Instead of being one of the umbrella institutions in the fight against corruption and instead of doing its job, it continuously engages in witch hunting, repressive control of only opposition representatives," said Radovanić.
In the EC report, it is emphasized, among other things, that the greatest degree of discrimination is present in the field of employment according to political affiliation. "Vijesti" interlocutors point out that this actually shows that even Brussels recognizes that there is no society of equal opportunities in Montenegro.
"From the well-known affair 'Snimak', according to which one employee brings four votes, to the statement of DPS deputy Ana Nikolić that we should all take DPS booklets if the problem is party recruitment, it is clear that this kind of perverted value system was established by the regime . Fortunately, there are increasingly visible signals from international partners that they too see party employment as a burning problem," Radovanić pointed out.
The Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) did not respond to questions on how to comment on the findings of the EC, especially the part concerning employment by political affiliation.
Vujošević believes that there are no indications that the situation will change, stressing that decision makers do not want to see this fact as a real threat to further progress.
"It is clear that if we want to continue the negotiation process, we must work on achieving concrete and measurable results, because otherwise, I am afraid that in the spring we will have an even more critical EC report on the overall progress in the negotiations," she said.
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