The Center for Civic Education (CGO) announced today that regarding part of the announcements on the structure of the new Government, which includes the formation of a new Ministry of European Affairs (MEP), it indicates that this would be a bad solution, systemically incompatible and without a foundation in the good comparative practice of countries joining the EU (European Union).
The Vice President of the URA Civic Movement, Filip Adžić, previously confirmed to Television News that the new government, if formed, will have a Ministry of European Affairs, that some current departments will be divided, and that there will be 16 or 18 departments.
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"CGO reminds that the Ministry of European Affairs (MEP) already existed in the first half of Duško Marković's government, and that it was disbanded in May 2018, among other things, at the proposal of CGO. That ministry was led by Aleksandar Andrija Pejović, who, following a report from CGO, was found by the Anti-Corruption Agency (ASK) to have violated the constitutional provision on the incompatibility of functions, as well as a number of other Montenegrin laws and international conventions. After that, the Office for European Integration was formed (KEI), at the Prime Minister's office, which still exists today. The MEP proved to be an unsuccessful experiment, and it resulted in numerous situations of confusion within the institutions. Namely, the artificial insistence on that solution often led to an overlap of competences, and it was clear even then that it was created only to satisfy someone's personal ambitions," states the statement of the CGE signed by Milica Zindović, associate on the programs.
CGO added that they remain of the opinion that such a ministry is unnecessary, because, as they say, there is no rational justification for it, and it can only serve party combinatorics, to the detriment of a strategic and professional approach in the public interest.
"It would not be good if the upcoming Government, which is appointed for one year, is guided by bad practices from the period of DPS rule, when ministries were formed and disbanded without any prior assessments, in order to balance the party's needs. It is also worth reminding that after the abolition of the MEP, it was precisely the representatives of the Citizens' Movement URA who publicly emphasized the position that the MEP should not exist, with an argument that the CGO agreed with.It is now clear that the MEP was formed only so that Pejović could call himself a minister. It was not enough for him to be only the main negotiator, he already accumulated positions, but also salaries", he said then Mileta Radovanić, secretary general of URE. However, the other day, he expressed a completely different attitude Filip Adžić, vice president of URE, announcing the re-formation of the MEP", the announcement reads.
The CGE stated that they believe that the negotiation process can and must be strengthened in many other ways, which will not lead to additional problems.
"Namely, the existing Office of the Prime Minister should be kept, that model proved to be successful in the case of Slovenia, but this also implies the appointment of a negotiator who has credibility, integrity, expertise and strength, and who, with the "political umbrella" of the Prime Minister, would derail and move this process forward. The CGO constantly points out that European affairs are domestic affairs, and that all ministries are equally responsible for the execution of these tasks, and one minister, in this respect, cannot position himself as a parallel prime minister, as Pejović tried to do through the formation of the MEP and which caused counter-effects for the process of European integration of Montenegro," said the CGE.
The NGO states that "in addition, it is necessary to focus on the negotiation structure, which in the Government of Zdravko Krivokapić, is not adequately aligned with the new methodology and has remained cumbersome, bureaucratized and ineffective, and has lost significant institutional memory and expert staff".
"This requires depoliticization, optimization and personnel strengthening of the KEI, as pointed out by the European Commission in Report for Montenegro for 2021. Also, the EC Report states that the reorganization of the negotiation structure was carried out without sufficient ex-ante analysis or a strategic approach, which should be a lesson to the new Government, which should not enter into that kind of danger in the same way by forming a new ministry. Finally, this kind of practice in the region exists only in Serbia, which adopted this bad solution from Montenegro, and in which it is proving to be unsuccessful. After all, the dynamics of Serbia's European path is not an example that Montenegro should be guided by, in contrast to the Slovenian model, which gave concrete and good results, because in Slovenia the public interest was ahead of the party interest in personnel and institutional organization of the negotiations," the CGO statement reads.
They stated that they regret that even after ten years of negotiations, this process has not been separated from narrow-party politics.
"In addition, by introducing such ideas, without any prior analysis, and especially in a government that will last for a short time, European partners may get the impression of frivolity, inconsistency, insufficient commitment, but also instrumentalization of the negotiation process," concludes the statement of the CGE.
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