Although many illegalities and dirty dealings have been revealed through the submission of requests for free access to information, even at the highest levels of government, this right has been abused for years.
By charging fees for not receiving answers to hundreds of requests on a daily basis, some people have made a large profit through individual lawyers, while the state has made a loss.
Due to the administration's silence, the state has paid out one million euros in lawsuits in the past two years alone.
The Administrative Court hopes that amendments to the Law, for which there was no majority before, will be adopted, which would prevent this bad practice.
If the MPs approve, amendments to the Law on Administrative Disputes should be adopted soon. This will at least partially put the state in the way of those who have taken millions of euros from the state through years of abuse of the right to free access to information.
President of the Administrative Court, Miodrag Pešić, says that by adopting the law, they would be much more up-to-date.
"Article 28 of the Law on Administrative Disputes is being amended in such a way that a decision can be made in cases due to the silence of the administration without holding an oral hearing. There are 26.500 cases before the court, of which around 13.500 are cases due to the silence of the administration. So, it would take four years to complete all of these cases with oral hearings. I expect that if the law is adopted, a large part of these cases will be resolved even during this year," Pešić pointed out.
According to the proposed amendments, the Administrative Court does not have to hold a public hearing when it is obvious that the lawsuit is well-founded and will certainly be accepted. This would leave those who request a hearing, just to collect legal fees, short-handed. Some individuals and several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are at the forefront of this.
"In the last two years, the illegal work of public authorities has cost the citizens of Montenegro around two million euros. I am only talking about the costs before the Administrative Court. Of that amount, more than half relates to the costs incurred due to the adoption of lawsuits due to the silence of the administration," said Pešić.
The concept is always the same: hundreds of requests are submitted to a municipality, school or state body, sometimes on the same day, and as soon as the deadline for an answer expires, a complaint is immediately submitted, and then a lawsuit, in order to collect costs through an oral hearing.
"I will tell you that in the last 4-5 years, the Administrative Court has received more cases than from its establishment until 2020. The dominant factor contributing to this was the increase in lawsuits due to the silence of the administration," said Pešić.
The same law was before the deputies in December 2022, but it did not pass because the Democrats were against it. Their amendments did not pass, and they claimed that the proposed changes would lead to the abolition of the right to oral debate. Now they say that they have not yet become acquainted with the latest proposal.
The majority party, the largest parliamentary group, says that changes to the law are necessary and that they will support them.
"We believe that these are quality solutions that were created as a product of cooperation with OECD/SIGMA but also domestic experts, and that the adoption of these changes will significantly improve the efficiency of administrative procedures," said Vasilije Čarapić from the Europe Now Movement (PES).
And the fact that there was no majority "in favor" two years ago has its price.
"We have a large number of cases today. I believe that the number of cases would certainly be ten thousand fewer today if that law had been adopted then. It's just a few lawyers who are filing a large number of these lawsuits, and we have even informed some competent authorities about it. We had one situation where, after we initiated some procedures, an NGO that had hired a lawyer withdrew two or three thousand lawsuits last year or the year before last," said Pešić.
Everyone swears by the state. When the vote is held, it will be known whether the citizens' representatives want to protect it, at least from these abuses.
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