Transparency Serbia: Priorities in fight against corruption for year 2019

Transparency Serbia considers that following issues are crucial for the successful fight against corruption in 2019:

 

Political corruption:

Putting legal limitations of “public officials’ campaigning”, i.e. allegedly ordinary activities of public officials that are aimed to obtain political promotion;

Establishing of independent oversight of rules related to the elections and campaign, having in mind insufficient activities of oversight bodies and suspicions for their political biasness in decision making process (Regulatory body for electronic media, agency for fight against corruption, Republican Electoral Committee, public prosecutors);

Introducing of rules for referendum campaign financing.

 

Anticorruption plans:

To identify reasons for non-achievement of National anti-corruption strategy 2013-2018 goals, and to adopt new Strategy that would contain accountability measures;

Thorough revision of the Action plan for chapter 23 of EU negotiation, by adding new activities and providing more precise indicators of success. Establishing of more effective implementation tracking mechanism.

 

Prosecuting and punishing corruption:

To investigate all suspicions on corruption where documents or direct accusations are published. Public prosecutors should not wait for anyone to submit criminal charge. Prosecutors should publish information about the outcome of such investigations, including an explanation in case that no criminal liability was identified;

Ensuring all necessary resources for prosecuting the corruption and use of special investigation techniques, for financial investigations that would be done in parallel with criminal one and for pro-activity in investigation of corruption;

To change Criminal Code in order to prosecute corruption more effectively.

 

Prevention of corruption – transparency of work

Government of Serbia should ensure enforcement of Commissioner’s decisions and to act upon all received requests for information;

Parliament should elect new Commissioner, based on criteria and in the procedure opened for all qualified candidates to apply;

Right to access information should not be decreased by changes of the Law (including current draft provisions on state owned enterprises and National bank);

Public authorities should publish information in an open format, and oversight bodies should compared data from these databases when determining their plan of work and oversight;

There should be legal duty to prepare and publish explanatory note for all decisions, including some Government conclusions.

 

Public finances:

To establish an effective oversight of public procurements;

To ensure full transparency of public private partnership agreements, planning and execution;

To stop with the practice of contracting based on interstate agreements, where transparency and competition may be excluded (in public procurements, PPPs and selling of public property).

 

Source: Transparency Serbia