The state has spent 95 million euros on public competitions in the last three years, mostly on projects of civil society organizations (53 million euros), as well as on public information (42 million euros), BIRN said. It is noted that there is not enough information available to assess the transparency of these competitions.
BIRN collected data on these competitions in partnership with Civic Initiatives and a team of researchers from 17 local NGOs.
The unique database “Public on public competitions”, as it is stated, enables an overview of spending on 1,637 competitions announced by 190 institutions at all levels of government. They funded 33,396 projects implemented by 11,070 media, citizens’ associations, youth organizations and cultural organizations and institutions, BIRN reported.
The analysis of the data, as it is explained, showed that the most money for public competitions is allocated at the level of local self-governments, ministries and provincial secretariats. During the year, the total amount is relatively stable, with a tendency to decrease in the period from 2019 to 2020.
Among other trends observed, BIRN singles out the following findings:
Although the research period covered the period of the Covid crisis, only 155 projects deal with this topic.
The two biggest problems in the implementation are the financing of the regular work of organizations and media through competitions for thematic projects, as well as the financing of the work of organizations and media of close authorities that have easier access to state funds.
The availability of information on public tenders is insufficient to ensure transparency and evaluation of their results.
There is a lack of standardization of the tender procedure and its harmonization at the level of all four sectors, which would contribute to greater transparency.
The total number of registered civil society organizations is five times higher than the number of organizations that receive money through competitions, and out of 11,070 winners, about 30% are repeated from year to year.
“In the conditions of prolonged health crisis, chronic lack of money on the market and insufficiently developed alternative financing models, state money is the most important source of financing for the observed sectors (media and information, culture and art, civil society organizations and youth) and is intended to achieve public interest.” it is added in the statement.
As it is added, public competitions in practice are becoming the subject of public interest due to numerous problems, from incomplete procedures and discretionary decision-making, all the way to major violations of the law, corruption and abuse.
“Only this year, the coalition of organizations gathered around the monitoring of public competitions Open on competitions (OKO), identified 10 competitions in which irregularities occurred and in which at least seven million euros were spent,” the statement reads.
It is noted that the first step in preventing abuse is to publish as much information as possible regarding competitions and the fullest possible public insight into this type of spending, Nova Ekonomija reports.
