The findings of the Group of Countries for the Fight against Corruption (GRECO) are objective and impartial proof that the Report on the Assessment of the Fulfillment of the Provisional Benchmarks for Chapters 23 and 24 (IBAR) in the negotiations with the EU was given to Montenegro as a gift, said the civic activist Dina Bajramspahić.
She told "Vijesta" that it is good that Montenegro received the IBAR, but it is bad that the necessary reforms are not being implemented, but that they are trying to make the most of the political momentum in the EU without investing efforts to fundamentally improve state administration.
Montenegro received IBAR at the end of June, and the condition for this was the adoption of a set of laws in the field of justice, the fight against crime and corruption, the media...
In the report published on Thursday, GRECO stated that Montenegro's progress is very limited when it comes to checking the integrity of the highest state officials in the executive branch - ministers and state secretaries before their appointment, and the results are even more modest when it comes to law enforcement authorities.
That body of the Council of Europe (CoE) sent 2022 recommendations to Montenegro in 22, of which only three were fully implemented. Eight recommendations were not implemented, and the state partially implemented half of the recommendations through the system.
Bajramspahić reminds that the fight against corruption, preventive and repressive, occupies one third of chapter 23 - justice and fundamental rights, and GRECO's conclusion in the report "comes down to the fact that systemic measures are not being implemented to reduce opportunities for corruption, but the public good continues to be exploited as the exclusive fiefdom of power holders".
He points out that the period of implementation of the recommendations was June 2022 - June 2024, so the government cannot shift responsibility to anyone else. It indicates that the executive has been given another 18 months to implement the same recommendations.
He believes that GRECO's expert findings coincide with the perception of corruption in Montenegro, which, according to Transparency International's latest report from January this year, is at the same level as during the previous government, and that it varies by only one point more or less than in 2016. . year.
Data from Transparency's report on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for the previous year show that Montenegro improved its position by one point compared to 2022. Transparency specifically pointed to the challenges facing the judiciary, such as its efficiency, especially in cases of high corruption. This was pointed out by the European Commission in its latest report.
Bajramspahić said that neither GRECO, nor Transparency, nor the Freedom House report "Nations in Transition", according to which Montenegro is still a hybrid regime in 2024, forced the new government to start comprehensive anti-corruption reforms.
Laws on the Government, the Parliament and the SPI are not a priority but a nuisance
Bajramspahić states that in the responses to GRECO, the Government unconvincingly tried to justify itself by claiming that a number of acts were being prepared and that their adoption was expected.
However, as he says, it is enough to look at the agenda of the Assembly and see that many laws were adopted without public discussion and expert analysis, according to a shortened procedure, "so it will be confirmed that when the ruling majority wants to adopt a law, two extraordinary ones can be scheduled Assembly sessions in one day in August".
According to her, it is obvious from this - that the Law on the Government, the Assembly and the Law on Free Access to Information (SPI), which are anti-corruption, are not a priority but a hindrance to the new government.
"For four full years, the ruling majority has been using technical obstacles and ambiguities around these laws to avoid limiting their broad possibilities for arbitrariness. While the mentioned laws are pending, holders of the highest state positions are relieved of integrity checks and risk of conflict of interest before being appointed to the position, and GRECO has repeated this for the umpteenth time," she said.
He believes that they are a relief from ethical responsibilities, so even though in 2020 a proposal for a code of ethics for holders of the highest executive positions in Montenegro was drafted and submitted to the Government, it has not been adopted to date.
He reminds that GRECO has also observed that, although the new Anti-corruption Strategy was adopted this year, among the six particularly risky areas (judiciary, Police and Customs Administration, environment, urbanism and spatial planning, public procurement, local self-government and public enterprises) the obvious risk of corruption of the highest executive functions was not recognized. GRECO expects the Government to supplement the Strategy and highlight this risk and implement measures to prevent it.
"Even in the rare cases where GRECO was lenient and assessed the recommendation as partially implemented, most of the activities reported by the Government were carried out by the Council of Europe, which assists the Government. This is the case with recommendation number five, which requires a comprehensive revision of the legislation from Montenegro in order to reduce the risks of corruption 'embedded' in laws and by-laws", said Bajramspahić.
As he adds, it can be seen from the actual actions of the government that even when the government adopts new practices with the aim of combating corruption, in practice there is a complete lack of implementation.
"For example, even though the government nominally adopted a procedure obliging all ministries to analyze the corruption risks embedded in that act before proposing an act, using a special form, the government completely bypasses its procedures that are mandatory for ministries. This is done in such a way that MPs of the ruling majority, at the persuasion of the Government, submit controversial laws to the Parliament, skipping the entire legislative process, which is the Government's obligation," she pointed out.
He warns that this kind of behavior derogates from the quality of the proposed acts, and this also explains the problem of the ruling majority defending the proposed solutions in the Assembly.
It is precisely the deficiency of the legislative process that should precede the debate in the Assembly, which should examine in detail all the merits and demerits of each solution and find a way to mitigate the flaws, that is the reason why the representatives of the Government ignore the control function of the Assembly because they do not have quality arguments on the set questions, explains Bajramspahić.
"Bypassing prescribed procedures destroyed the quality of both the governmental and parliamentary legislative process. The parliamentary part of the procedure was reduced to voting according to a political directive, a mere show of hands, without responsibility for the shortcomings of the adopted acts", she assessed.
The result, he says, is the accumulation of regulations that enable arbitrariness, abuses and corruption in all areas.
"This is precisely the reason why a comprehensive revision of the entire anti-corruption legislation is required," said Bajramspahić.
He reminds that what was implemented in the previous period was the inclusion of checks by the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK) in the procedure for appointing advisers to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, although it was not reported in detail whether this procedure was applied during the reconstruction of the Government.
He reminds that a new Council for the fight against corruption has been formed, but its cooperation with other anti-corruption bodies has not been precisely defined.
ASK to control all high-ranking officials
When it comes to KAS, GRECO reminds of the obligation to ensure adequate resources of the Agency for full, independent and efficient implementation of its competences.
"The KAS is expected to carry out mandatory control of all high-ranking officials, not just 20 of them, and essentially, not just administratively," explained Bajramspahić.
When it comes to the police, GRECO notes that the situation is even worse than with the highest executive functions and highlights the lack of training of the Montenegrin police in matters of integrity, the lack of efforts to ensure that the appointments of police officers are based on merit and without undue political influence, including at the highest level , and the adoption of the new Code of Ethics for police officers is also expected. They reiterated that there are three bodies dealing with police officers without clearly defined roles.
"Even though all these problems have been known for a long time, the Ministry of Interior and the Government launched an initiative completely contrary to all these recommendations," said Bajramspahić.
Additional politicization of the police
Bajramspahić reminds that on August 1, amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs were submitted to the Parliament, which "will further derogate the police system and forget any hope of professionalizing the police."
He states that the draft law, which is expected to be adopted by the Assembly in a shortened procedure at an extraordinary session, envisages a complete liberalization of employment in the police - without a personnel plan, without public advertising, bypassing the Human Resources Administration, bypassing mandatory training.
The procedure is carried out by a commission established by the minister, which, according to Bajramspahić, the entire procedure is additionally politicized, and they also prescribed "extraordinary promotion" so that new politically eligible police officers without prior mandatory training could jump over ranks and climb the police hierarchy more quickly.
This, as he says, is justified by the fact that there is a high number of unfilled jobs, but "they deliberately fail to say that in 2022 an incredible 1.001 new jobs in the police were added through systematization, so it is quite logical that these positions will be unfilled and that Montenegro there are not so many people ready to perform complex police tasks".
"If employment is carried out as it was intended, it will have consequences for a number of future decades, because the police will be filled with people who do not know how to apply police powers, do not understand human rights or criminal procedure, not to mention the sensitivity to the treatment of special categories", she warned.
GRECO insists that checks on candidates for entry into the police force, as well as in the context of promotions, should go beyond criminal record checks and security checks and should be carried out regularly after employment, as personal circumstances can change over time and make employees more vulnerable to possible risks of corruption.
Bajramspahić reminds that not only have integrity checks not been introduced for police officers in the context of their appointments and promotions, as well as during their careers, but with the drastic increase in their number, beyond the regular procedure, there is no prospect that an adequate system will be established in the near future.
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