Dragan Damjanović, President of the Council of the Agency for the Protection of Competition, said that he did not understand why the Government of Montenegro did not ask the agency for an opinion on the controversial agreement with the Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), since this has always been the case in similar situations. He appeared on "Boje jutra" on TV Vijesti and expressed his belief that this was a procedural oversight that would be corrected in time, as it could have caused multi-million-dollar damage to the state and investors.
"We will look to send a letter today to the ministry that the Government has designated as responsible for this agreement in order to obtain the data we need for decision-making. It is a very specific situation, an unusual procedure because this Government has had very fair cooperation with the agency so far, and all those agreements and smaller-level laws have always come to us for assessment. So at the last council session, we gave our opinion on several laws, what could possibly be improved in those laws. I don't know why the government decided to skip us this time, when it comes to this historic one that should bring benefits to the state," said Damjanović.
He added that the agency learned from the media that it had been bypassed, and that it should have given its opinion much earlier.
"We are now trying to find a legal loophole, or an opportunity to act, without harming either the investor or the state. It is a very complicated situation. If the agreement is ratified in parliament, our room for reaction will be further narrowed, or we will no longer be able to evaluate these laws on an ex-ante basis and will have to enter into a subsequent control procedure. This is what we want to avoid and we are looking to use the institute of pre-examination actions so as not to burden the procedure to the end, but so that in the pre-examination procedure we can give an opinion, a legal standpoint and instructions on what the Government should not violate in terms of the rules," explained Damjanović.
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The President of the Council of the Agency for the Protection of Competition said that there is still time to correct the mistake.
"We have two paths: the path of the official procedure where we can all get out on a green note in the end. And the other path that would not be public, transparent, all of which could later be questioned by the European Commission," Damjanović pointed out, recalling that the previous two governments made similar mistakes.
"We had similar situations when Mr. Marković's 41st government was in power, it concerned the issue of Montenegro Airlines, the same with Mr. Abazović's 42nd government regarding the Steel Plant, and now the 43rd government wants to get into the same problem. Because when the agency does not appreciate it in the ex-ante control, the European Commission returns it to be checked in the ex-post control, and when the ex-post control occurs, we have to prohibit everything until the procedure is completed, possibly demanding the return of state aid plus default interest, which is how multi-million dollar damage is caused to both the image of investors and the image of the state," said the guest of "Boja jutra".
He specified that if it is determined that elements of state aid are present, the agency will automatically be obliged to initiate an investigation and prohibit the granting of any other state aid until the procedure is completed.
"According to our law, the norm is imperative. We do not want it to come to that, so as not to damage either the investor or the state, we want to act constructively... This government has communicated very correctly with the agency so far, especially the Ministry of Economy, which has the most such programs, always respects the procedure, comes to the agency for its opinion. Documents on which the agency did not give an opinion are even often withdrawn from the government. Colleagues from the Ministry of Finance always assist. And I find it very strange, since this is something that will have effects on the economy, that neither ministry is present. I find it strange that such a procedure unnecessarily went in that direction and now we all have a problem," Damjanović added.
He said that there had been no reaction from the government yet after the agency issued a statement saying that it had to be consulted before signing the intergovernmental agreement with the United Arab Emirates.
Commenting on the appeal of the President of Montenegro, Jakov Milatović, to the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, in which he requested an official opinion on the compliance of the interstate Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Tourism and Real Estate Development, signed between the Government of Montenegro and the United Arab Emirates, Damjanović said that it was ungrateful to comment on the bickering between the President and the Government, but that he believed that the President had no place in such topics.
"First, we need to comply with internal procedures and then seek the EC's opinion. Anything done illegally will be sent back to us by the EC. That's what we're trying to avoid. I'm afraid of that, because I'm also the head of negotiating group number 8 and everything we missed was later returned to the closing criteria. We now have four criteria, and the fourth relates to Montenegro Airlines, KAP and the highway. So everything we skip, the EC returns later, and then it's a pretty ugly picture. That creates a very difficult situation in the negotiating chapter. We're almost on the verge of joining the European family and the least we need is for some procedural error to disrupt our path. I hope we'll have enough awareness to comply with the procedure... Someone wants to substitute the thesis that we want to chase away investors. No, we're sending the best possible message to investors - that this country has healthy institutions and good procedures. Every serious investor like this one wants to see that a country has all of that because that's how his capital is safest," Damjanović concluded.
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