The Government of Serbia is in the hinterland in the region when it comes to reporting on its work, the only worse is the Government of Albania, which does not submit reports at all, while that practice in Serbia is still irregular, says Milena Lazarevic.
Through this regional project, we also analyzed how transparent government sessions are, that is, those decisions that governments make – whether the agenda or the minutes from the sessions are published, she states. Here again, we have the situation that the Government of Serbia is one of the most non-transparent in the region, says Lazarevic and adds: “Not only is the agenda not made available to the public and no minutes from the sessions are published, but a serious problem continues, which we have been pointing out for years, and that is that certain acts adopted by the Government, certain conclusions – as a rule are not published.” This, she points out, is a problem because in a modern democracy that aspires to the EU, these acts should, as a rule, be available to the public, unless they are marked with confidentiality labels. Lazarevic reports that the conclusions, as a rule, are not published, unless the text of that conclusion says that it will be published.
“On the other hand, we have examples of other governments in the region where the agenda is regularly published, somewhat less often the minutes… In BiH, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro,” she says.
Milos Djindjic from the Center for European Policies, talking about administrative services, says that the research showed that citizens think that they are simpler, that it is easier to get services, that it takes less time to get them and that it is easier to communicate with the administration. He says that the level of digitalization has increased, but also that there are problems on the other side. Many citizens in Serbia and in the region still do not know about electronic services, so their use is not at an enviable level, says Djindjic and adds: “A large part of services is still provided at the counters.”
When it comes to hiring civil servants, Lazarevic says that in Serbia the procedure of applying for public competitions has been simplified, so it is much easier to apply for a competition, but that, on the other hand, we have a situation where a huge percentage of high-ranking officials, managers, sets through the “old, good” procedure of the acting. In 2019, there were 94 percent of appointments through the acting procedure, and a worse example than Serbia is Northern Macedonia, where all such appointments are made in a political way to these positions, which is even worse,” states the N1 guest.
Both civil servants and citizens, in the survey, said that they believe that employment in state institutions is not conducted on the basis of merit, but on the basis of political ties. Most civil servants perceive this problem and the vast majority of citizens, Lazarevic says.
Regarding the spending of budget money, Lazarevic says that in most parts of the region there is basic budget transparency and publication of basic reports on the use of funds, but also that the problem in most parts of the region is that these reports do not contain notifications – what is achieved with the money spent.
In Montenegro, a very elementary thing is not published – the civil budget, which intends to explain to the citizens what taxpayers’ money is spent on, and that is worrying, says Lazarevic.
The greatest progress in budget transparency was achieved, she says, by Northern Macedonia, which launched “an exceptional internet portal that informs the citizens of the country in real time about the use of the budget, expenditures and donations related to the Covid pandemic on the realization of capital expenditures”.
According to Lazarevic, they noticed the biggest positive shift in the region, when it comes to increasing the level of transparency of supreme audit institutions and the level of their communication with the public, N1 reports.
