Fight against corruption in the EC progress report for 2012 Serbia

1. Fight against corruption in the EC progress report for 2012 Serbia Transparency - Serbia Belgrade, 12 October 2012

2. About corruption • 1.1.5. Anti-corruption policy (See also Chapter 23 – Judiciary and fundamental rights) • Serbia has made little progress in the fight against corruption. Progress was made mainly regarding enforcement of the legislation. Implementation of outstanding GRECO recommendations continued. The amendments to the Law on Health Care and the Law on Advocates include provisions on conflict of interest. The Government has not yet finalised its National Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2012–2016 and the corresponding Action Plan. There has been little evidence in practice of the coordinating role officially assigned to the Minister of Justice under the previous government. A specific responsibility in this area was entrusted to the First Deputy Prime Minister in the new Serbian government. The Anti-Corruption Agency’s operations, which focus on prevention, increased. The Agency started to implement the 2011 Law on the Financing of Political Activities. It adopted implementing legislation on the monitoring of electoral campaigns and set up an extensive network for the monitoring of the 2012 elections. It also collected annual financial reports from a majority of political entities and issued warnings to 10 of them who had failed to submit such report by the deadline. The Agency continued to make targeted checks on asset declarations it has received. This activity led to misdemeanourjudgements in two cases, and criminal charges in another. The Agency collected few data for its new registry of legal entities involved in public procurement in which public officials have shares over 20%. Regarding cases of dual public functions presenting a risk of conflict of interest, the Agency took close to 500 decisions in 2011 that are generally being enforced. However, the Agency has still to establish a track record of effective checks on party funding. It has not yet made full use of its powers and needs to improve cooperation with relevant stakeholders to investigate declarations of assets effectively. The Anti-Corruption Council continued to be active in exposing and analysing cases of systemic corruption. There has been very limited follow-up to its detailed reports of highprofile corruption cases. The special prosecutor for corruption and organised crime launched investigations into 115 corruption cases in 2011. These included several medium- to high-level cases. There was a marked increase in the number of lower-level corruption cases for which the prosecutor’s offices initiated investigations in 2011, but in the great majority of such cases sanctions remained lenient. Further efforts are needed to establish a track record of prosecution and conviction, particularly in high-level cases. The law enforcement bodies need to become more proactive and develop their ability to conduct financial investigations. There was little action to protect whistleblowers. Internal checks by the customs administration and the police have continued to result in a sizeable number of cases being investigated and penalties imposed. Public procurement, management of public enterprises, privatisation procedures and public expenditure remain areas of serious concern, in which independent supervision and capacity for the early detection of wrongdoing and conflicts of interest are underdeveloped. Health and Education remain particularly vulnerable to corruption. Comprehensive risk analyses for areas vulnerable to corruption are needed. Coordination between all stakeholders needs to be strengthened to ensure effective prevention and prosecution of corruption cases. • Overall, the implementation of the legal framework for fighting corruption has continued. The Anti-Corruption Agency’s operations increased, mostly in relation to the financing of political parties. However, corruption remains prevalent in many areas and continues to be a serious problem. A new Anti-Corruption Strategy and Action Plan are still awaited. The implementation of the legal framework and the efficiency of anti-corruption institutions need to be significantly improved. Further efforts are needed to adopt a more proactive approach toinvestigating and prosecuting corruption and the judiciary needs to gradually build up a solid track record of convictions, including in high-level cases, particularly in cases of misuse of public funds. Stronger political direction and more effective inter-agency coordination are needed to significantly improve performance in combating corruption.

3. About corruption „ Serbia has made little progress in the fight against corruption“. TS Comment : According to opinion of EC such progress reflects mostly in „implementation of the law“, i.e., there is no significant progress in legislation.

4. Institutional and legal framework • „ Implementation of outstanding GRECO recommendations continued“ • TS Comment: This comment of EC probably refers to changes of the Criminal Code that are currently in procedure, and which are, among other, implemented to be harmonized with recommendations from third round of GRECO evaluation, on which report is to be submitted by 30 April 2012. That report is still unpublished. As part of third evaluation circle, Serbia was asked to change provisions of Criminal Code, in order to sanction certain forms of corruptive behavior that are not comprehended clearly enough with existing provisions. In second part of the report, which refers to financing of political parties and treats period that was under old law, recommendations are fulfilled by adopting Law on Financing of Political Activities, besides prescribing of deadline in which Agency is obligated to publish reports on campaign financing.

5. Certain regulations • „ The amendments to the Law on Health Care and the Law on Advocates include provisions on conflict of interest“. • TS Comment: This comment of the EC refers to changes from previous period, and not the one covered by this report. Namely, Law on Advocates is effective since May 2011, and final changes of the Law on Health Care are effective since August 2011. This does not refer to comprehensive determining of conflict of interest in health but more of changes that refer to statement on non existing conflict of interest by members of Ethical Committee that approves clinical testing of drugs.

6. Strategy and Action Plan • „ The Government has not yet finalized its National Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2012–2016 and the corresponding Action Plan.“ • TS Comment: Statement on whether new Anticorruption Strategy and Action Plan were left unfinished is true, but linking such activities solely to Government isn’t appropriate. Namely, still valid Strategy was adopted by National Assembly in December 2005, so the new one should be adopted also by that body, since it is document that doesn’t obligate just the Government but also other organs in other authority branches. Since previous Strategy didn’t have time schedule, new one can not only refer to period from 2012 – 2016, but also to period that will be determined on the basis of date of its adoption. Noticeable here, on the basis of data from annual report of the Anticorruption Agency, progress in fulfillment of existing obligations from Strategy and Action Plan was week, and organs and organizations that are obligated by the Law, do not deliver to the Agency trimester reports on fulfillment of obligations on the basis of those documents. One of the reasons for standstill working on Strategy and Action Plan are elections, negotiations on establishing of new Government and circumstance that the new Government didn’t have clear plan on continuation of work on this document from the start (strategy is not mentioned at all in coalition agreement of ruling parties from July 2012, and process of replacing members of working group begun only just recently.

7. Coordination inside Government • „ There has been little evidence in practice of the coordinating role officially assigned to the Minister of Justice under the previous government.“ • “A specific responsibility in this area was entrusted to the First Deputy Prime Minister in the new Serbian government”. • In this way, EC expresses dissatisfaction with the effects of Government’s decision from 2011, which appointed , Ministry of Justice, Snežana Malović, for coordinator of state organs in fight against corruption. It is good to emphasize also that this decision on appointing was in public interpreted wrong as coordinating work of all state organs, which was partially caused with announcements of actions to be undertaken by prosecutors office from former Minister.   • Obvious, from this and previous reports of EC, large significance is given to coordination of various organs’ activities in fight against corruption, as well as to demonstrating political will to fight corruption. Also, it is no secret that fight against corruption in Serbia in previous years wasn’t comprehensive nor efficient enough due to influence of political power holders to investigative organs or, the least, due to hesitating of police and prosecution to initiate investigations and procedures against political moguls and their relatives unless they have clear support for this. • However, introducing politicians in discovering and prosecuting corruption that is under authorities of investigative organs is risky for accomplishing principles of rule of law even when such influence is positive in a specific case.

8. About ACAS • The Anti-Corruption Agency’s operations, which focus on prevention, increased. The Agency started to implement the 2011 Law on the Financing of Political Activities. It adopted implementing legislation on the monitoring of electoral campaigns and set up an extensive network for the monitoring of the 2012 elections. It also collected annual financial reports from a majority of political entities and issued warnings to 10 of them who had failed to submit such report by the deadline. The Agency continued to make targeted checks on asset declarations it has received. This activity led to misdemeanor judgments in two cases, and criminal charges in another. The Agency collected few data for its new registry of legal entities involved in public procurement in which public officials have shares over 20%. Regarding cases of dual public functions presenting a risk of conflict of interest, the Agency took close to 500 decisions in 2011 that are generally being enforced. However, the Agency has still to establish a track record of effective checks on party funding. It has not yet made full use of its powers and needs to improve cooperation with relevant stakeholders to investigate declarations of assets effectively.

9. About the Agency – officials’ reports • „The Agency continued to make targeted checks on asset declarations it has received. This activity led to misdemeanour judgements in two cases, and criminal charges in another “. „The Agency collected few data for its new registry of legal entities involved in public procurement in which public officials have shares over 20%. Regarding cases of dual public functions presenting a risk of conflict of interest, the Agency took close to 500 decisions in 2011 that are generally being enforced “. „However, the Agency has still to establish a track record of effective checks on party funding. It has not yet made full use of its powers and needs to improve cooperation with relevant stakeholders to investigate declarations of assets effectively “ • TS Comment: From this year’s EC report, it is clear that great significance is given to accomplishing of results in property control and incomes of public officials. Although the EC report states that the Agency should perform validations of data from officials’ reports to promote cooperation with other organs, it is unclear whether EC is satisfied with other aspects of control (e.g. number of officials’ reports that were subjected to validation and scope of validation , number of initiated procedures) and what represents the obstacle for those controls to be more efficient.   Although observation of EC that in the situations of „double functions“, decisions and recommendations of the Agency were almost completely implemented, that hasn’t happened in some important cases (e.g. case from December 2011 when National Assembly refused to approve dismissal of Supreme Judiciary Council member, Predraga Dimitrijevića, that was to become effective „by Law“).

10. Political party financing • „The Anti-Corruption Agency’s operations, which focus on prevention, increased. The Agency started to implement the 2011 Law on the Financing of Political Activities. It adopted implementing legislation on the monitoring of electoral campaigns and set up an extensive network for the monitoring of the 2012 elections. It also collected annual financial reports from a majority of political entities and issued warnings to 10 of them who had failed to submit such report by the deadline..“ •   TS Comment: This part of the report contains some true conclusions. However, the report doesn’t state the data that are important to evaluate recent implementation of legal provisions, which was insufficient. Namely, 85 registered political parties had the obligation of delivering annual financial reports for 2011, as well as the least 80 civil groups with the characteristics of political subject. On the other hand, 40 days after the expiration of deadline for submitting of annual reports (insight into status of published reports on Agency’s web page), that obligation was fulfilled by merely 48 political subjects (among which are several civil groups and others are political parties). Since non submission of annual financial report in legal deadline is prescribed as a misdemeanor, this shows that large number of misdemeanor procedure cases should be initiated instead of imposing measures of warning. When it comes to control of election campaign financing legality, from May 2012, EC report doesn’t provide data on results of monitoring and control, nor on proceeding of election participants, and not even on facts that are un doubtable (e.g. that even larger political parties and coalitions haven’t submitted reports for all provincial and local elections they participated in). However, assessment that effects of the control and implementation of the Law had to be better is clearly expressed, and that is attributed to insufficient usage of control authorities by the Agency.

11. Anticorruption Council • The Anti-Corruption Council continued to be active in exposing and analyzing cases of systemic corruption. There has been very limited follow-up to its detailed reports of high profile corruption cases.

12. Anticorruption Council • „The Anti-Corruption Council continued to be active in exposing and analyzing cases of systemic corruption. There has been very limited follow-up to its detailed reports of high profile corruption cases “. • TS Comment: Since certain reports of the Council from previous years were subject of European Parliament’s interest (so called „24 privatizations“), it can be expected that report of EC can be slightly more detailed regarding those matters. In any case, it is still uncertain what kind of steps will the Government (that included investigation of these cases into Coalition Agreement), or other organs will undertake measures to shed light upon Council’s reports (except in the case of issuing permits to company „Nuba invest“). At the same time, it remains unclear, for now, whether Government anticipates some role for Council in future (Council operates with only five members currently, decision on establishment was not changed).

13. State Audit Insitution • The State Audit Institution (SAI) continued to gradually build up its capacities, and further auditors were recruited The SAI has now approximately 130 staff, including over 100 auditors. A strategic development plan for 2011- 15 was adopted by the SAI Council in November 2011. The SAI continued to work on improving audit methodology. It also further increased audit coverage. However, the SAI Law does not provide for full financial and operational independence in line with the standards of the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). The SAI is still in the institution-building phase, as it has only operated for four years. It is under-resourced, and the audit coverage is still rather limited. Performance audit work has not yet started. In addition, according to the requirements of the SAI Law, the SAI continues to have a specific responsibility to submit requests for filing misdemeanour and/or criminal charges to the competent authority. This esponsibility, which rather should be part of wider budget inspection activities, takes up some of the SAI’s limited resources that could be instead used for additional audit work. Preparations in this area are at an early stage.

14. Police and Prosecution • „The special prosecutor for corruption and organized crime launched investigations into 115 corruption cases in 2011. These included several medium- to high-level cases. There was a marked increase in the number of lower-level corruption cases for which the prosecutor’s offices initiated investigations in 2011, but in the great majority of such cases sanctions remained lenient. Further efforts are needed to establish a track record of prosecution and conviction, particularly in high-level cases. The law enforcement bodies need to become more proactive and develop their ability to conduct financial investigations. There was little action to protect whistleblowers. .“  • TS Comment:  It can not be verified from publicly available data whether the number of initiated investigations in the cases of corruption stated in the EC report is true (e.g. according to data available to TS, in 2011. special prosecution submitted 9 indictment for cases of corruption, that mostly comprehend several defendant). Estimation on cases of corruption in medium/high level could refer to former directors of public enterprises against which indictments were initiated during previous year. Estimation on increasing number of lower level corruption cases cannot be completely verified, but, it probably comprehends cases of other public prosecutors and not only of special prosecutor’s office (other paragraph of the EC report shows initiating 2770 cases of corruption in 2011 by other public prosecution offices).

15. Police and Prosecution • This year’s report emphasizes significance of final convictions in cases of high level corruption and it is obvious that the results in that field of fight against corruption will be appreciated as one of the key criteria. Besides that , again, as in previous year, necessity for proactive approach in fight against corruption. Although this term is not elaborated, it could first and foremost refer to necessity that police and prosecution shouldn’t wait for criminal charges but to investigate themselves whether responsibility for criminal acts of corruption exists on the basis of other available data (e.g. on the basis of the State Audit Institution report and other state organs, on the basis of titles in media), or to investigate whether there was corruption on the basis of experience from previous cases resolved (e.g. if it was determined that there was corruption in disposing with construction land in one city, to investigate whether there was corruption in other cities with the same regulations).   • Comment on insufficient protection of whistleblowers is obviously true, but deserves to be treated with more attention. One should have in mind that protection of whistleblowers does not relate only to reporting or discovering corruption, but also to other problems, as well as that whistleblowers can point out not only to criminal acts but also to other damaging effects. In any case, it is important to emphasize that Serbia has a large number of corruption cases that are not being reported and that such problem is a consequence of inadequate protection of persons that report corruption, lack of stimulus for reporting corruption, lack of trust in institutions, slow proceeding of state organs as well as the fact that persons that were involved in such act have most knowledge of it, and therefore can be exposed to criminal prosecution so they don’t want to share their knowledge with others.

16. Police and Prosecution • „ Internal checks by the customs administration and the police have continued to result in a sizeable number of cases being investigated and penalties imposed. Public procurement, management of public enterprises, privatisation procedures and public expenditure remain areas of serious concern, in which independent supervision and capacity for the early detection of wrongdoing and conflicts of interest are underdeveloped. Health and Education remain particularly vulnerable to corruption. Comprehensive risk analyses for areas vulnerable to corruption are needed. Coordination between all stakeholders needs to be strengthened to ensure effective prevention and prosecution of corruption cases..“ • TS Comment: This year’s report, legitimately, states, public procurements and managing public enterprises, weaknesses of supervisory mechanisms, inexistent analysis of risky areas and weakness of capacity for early discovering of corruption as the most problematic areas. On certain matters that are mentioned here there is more saying in other parts of the report. For example, report states „that Assembly should reconsider annual reports of independent state organs and to promote proceeding by their legal proposals“, budget inspection of the Ministry of Finances (and economy) should be strengthened, „to investigate determined irregularities“ etc. Second chapter of the EC report precises that estimation on underdeveloped supervisory mechanisms and mechanisms for early discovering of corruption refers foremost to health and education. Report does not reflect current changes of regulations for public procurements or public enterprises’ functioning, nor gives specific advises on what should be done to improve their state, but can certainly be expected that possible successes or failures of the reform will be subject of consideration in following annual report.

17. Public procurements • There has been some progress in the field of public procurement, particularly in the area of public-private partnerships. Serbia needs to keep up steady efforts to implement its legislative framework on public procurement, and in particular to avoid irregularities in the use of the negotiated procedure. Effective coordination between the main stakeholders, including audit and judicial institutions, needs to be ensured. The enforcement record and administrative capacities of the Budgetary Inspection of the Ministry of Finance in charge of supervision of public procurement needs to be substantially strengthened. Overall, alignment in the area of public procurement is moderately advanced.

18. Public procurements • „The Republic Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedure has considerably strengthened its administrative and enforcement capacities... „The Law on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and Concessions was adopted in November 2011.“  • „the government strategy for upgrading the public procurement system largely remains to be implemented “.   • „Public Procurement Office (PPO) detected irregularities in negotiated procedures...“  • „... podzakonskiaktizaprimenupropisa o javnoprivatnompartnerstvuidaljenisudoneti“.  • „... the administrative capacity of the Budgetary Inspectorate needs to be strengthened so that it can effectively follow up on the many irregularities detected“.   • „... In general, tendering authorities do not take appropriate action often enough in cases of established misuse of public money“.  • The Republic Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedure (‘Republic Commission’), which is the second-instance body in the procedure for reviewing the award of public contracts, has considerably strengthened its administrative and enforcement capacities.“

19. Public procurements • TS Comment:   These parts of the reports that refer to public procurements and public private partnerships properly notice certain trends. However, several important things should be emphasized. Regarding public private partnerships, surely a good step is that matter is finally organized, because absence of regulations in the past in that area was interpreted as it was allowed to sign contracts on business technical cooperation and similar, due to which implementation of the Public Procurement Law and of other regulations was avoided. Having in mind that Coalition Agreement anticipates wide implementation of PPP, especially regarding ownership transformation of public utility enterprises, incomplete legal system in this area and wide discretionary powers with choosing whether PPP will be conducted or other modality for satisfying citizens’ needs and promoting of public services’ work, creates great risks from corruption. Lack of strategic approach in the public procurement reform is a huge problem. Although, Strategy for promotion of public procurement system from September last year properly recognized problems and possible methods of their resolving (which can never be said for corresponding Action Plan), question remains in what level will it be implemented. Namely, Coalition agreement doesn’t mention it, although it contains clear intention for changes of the Public Procurement Law (proposition of the group of deputies from SNS in February 2012 which is currently in the process of public debate). Although, this makes it clear that Public Procurement Law will be changed, question remains unanswered, when will other related regulations be changed, primarily Budget System Law, which was recently changed by emergency procedure, without public debate, therefore, without possibility to incorporate mechanisms for preventing abuses in the public procurement planning phase. Also, it remained unclear whether the reform of Criminal Code will comprehend measures envisaged by the Strategy (e.g. introducing criminal act of illegal enrichment from article 20. of UNCAC). Finally, report well notices the need to strengthen certain control organs in the public procurement area, but one should have in mind that this question will receive new dimension if the new Public Procurement Law is to be adopted, primarily because of intorducing new authorities and tasks that are envisaged for Public Procurement Office.

20. Economy • „ Corruption and unclear property rights continue to hamper economic activities.“. • TS Comment: In part of the report that refers to functioning of economy, assessment from previous years, that corruption is one of the key problems for doing business in Serbia, is repeated.

21. Media reporting • „Media reporting was also noted as insufficiently balanced and analytical, which pointed to the wider need to clarify the issue of media ownership “. • TS Comment: This quote was taken from the part that refers to May elections. Besides unresolved matter of public property of media, non transparent criteria for media financing from the budget and other public sources, represent a problem.

22. Parliament • „Parliamentary oversight of the work of the executive remained weak.“ • TS Comment: In the part of the report that refers to work of National Assembly, well noticed is one of the key problems of division of authority and public accountability system functioning in Serbia – insufficient supervision over work of executive authority.

23. Creating of regulations • „the drafting process continues to lack transparency, sufficient structure and time for effective consultation of all interested parties....“. „The implementation and monitoring of adopted legislation needs to be improved “. „Ministries do not always follow up and even in some instances openly challenge the opinions and recommendations of independent regulatory bodies, including the State Audit Institution.“ • TS Comment: In this part of the EC report, on Government’s activities, several key weaknesses that disrupt fight against corruption were identified. Firstly, underdeveloped (normatively and in practice) public debate system during regulations drafting. TS recently presented analysis of regulation and practice weaknesses from this area and recommendations for improvement of such state, that were published in wider study on legislation procedure in the Republic of Serbia GIZ. This study also treats matters of implementation and effects of adopted regulation.   Non proceeding by decisions and recommendations of state organs, out of which some are extremely important in fight against corruption, represents one of the largest problems for accomplishing Rule of Law principle. Although great majority of decisions and recommendations of Commissioner for Information, Ombudsman, Anticorruption Agency, State Audit Institution are being executed, that certainly can’t be reason enough to be satisfied with this state, because there shouldn’t be any exceptions. Obviously, this problem is related to insufficiently efficient supervision of Parliament over work of executive authority and that for starters, solution could be looked in active resolving of problems from independent state organs’ annual reports.

24. System of employment • „The recruitment and career system is not yet fully merit-based and recruitment is still prone to political influence “. „A number of appointments to senior civil service positions are still pending “ „Selection procedures are not applied uniformly and managers still have too much discretion when choosing candidates from lists drawn up by selection panels following competitions “ „Temporary employees are still not recruited according to competitive criteria and contracts are allocated without internal or public competition.“ • TS Comment: These several evaluations contain some of the most important problems for establishing professional administration in all authority levels. That problem is even more pronounced in public institutions, public agencies and public enterprises, also in local level, due to which measures that are prescribed with Law on State Servants refer to them.

25. Independent state organs • „Several independent regulatory bodies continue to face logistical constraints. Parliament needs to resume the review of their annual reports and improve follow up of legislative proposals tabled by such bodies.“„The largest number of reported violations relates to governance. Changes to the Law on the Ombudsman, which should enhance the Ombudsman’s independence, still have not been adopted. The Ombudsman’s recommendations were not sufficiently followed up..“„Some progress has been made in the implementation of legislation ensuring access to information of public importance. However the recommendations of the Commissioner are still not sufficiently followed up “. „Amendments to the central bank law adopted in August 2012 have seriously undermined the independence of the National Bank of Serbia “. • TS Comment: In this paragraph, EC report directly states about the need to improve status and support independent work of several state organs (Commissioner for Information, Ombudsman, State Audit Institution, as well as on National Assembly role. Step backwards in regards to independency are changes of the Law on NBS. Also, EC still uses expression „independent regulatory bodies“ which is partially wrong. Namely, in Serbia there are „independent state organs“, as well as certain independent bodies and organizations whose legal status is less clearly organized. With most of the independent state organs that have a role in fight against corruption, regulatory role is less significant from other tasks they perform. Using of expression „regulatory bodies“ can cause confusion for them.

26. Judicial reform • „The re-appointment procedure carried out for judges and prosecutors in 2009/2010 and the review process conducted to correct its shortcomings were overturned in July 2012 by the Constitutional Court as not meeting the required standards. The Court revoked all the decisions of the HJC and the SPC on the non-re-appointment of judges and prosecutors that had been appealed and instructed the Councils to reinstate all of them within 60 days. For the judges, the Court considered inter alia that the HJC did not apply the required quorum and breached the requirement of impartiality. In this respect, the Court objected to the participation of ex-officio members — the President of the Supreme Court, the head of the parliamentary committee and the Minister of Justice — and the member representative of the lawyers to both the first decision on re-appointment and the review process. The Court also considered that the presumption of suitability required that judges could only be dismissed by the positive votes of the majority of the HJC members, which was not the case as three of them were in part or fully unavailable to act (one resigned and was replaced 3 months later, another faced criminal proceedings and a third one faced a procedure for incompatibility of duties as dean of a law faculty). For the prosecutors, similar shortcomings were found which invalidated the SPC’s assessment that the petitioners did not fulfil the criteria of worthiness, professional qualification and competence. In particular, the Constitutional Court found that the review process unfairly placed the burden of proof on the petitioners and that the Council’s decisions were often based on facts and assertions that could not be challenged by the petitioners. As a results, the Serbian authorities need to evaluate how to the judicial reform can be further advanced after most non-reappointed judges and prosecutors are to be reintegrated further to the rulings of the Constitutional Court.“

27. Judiciary reform • „The HJC and the SPC have not yet adopted rules on regular evaluation of the work and performance of serving judges and prosecutors. “. • „The legal framework still leaves room for undue political influence over the judiciary, in particular as regards parliament’s power to appoint judges and prosecutors — including the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Republic Public Prosecutor — and its direct participation in the work of the HJC and the SPC “. • „In order to restore the confidence of the citizens, the authorities will need to consider additional measures to strengthen the independence, impartiality, competence, accountability and efficiency of the judiciary, in particular: transparent criteria for appointments of judges and prosecutors... integrity safeguards; court rationalisation. To meet these challenges, a new strategy on judicial reform is needed, together with an action plan to implement the strategy, based on a functional review of the judiciary. • TS Comment:  EC properly notices some of the crucial problems in the process of „general election“ of judges and prosecutors also afterwards in proceeding of authorized organs. We feel that, besides procedural mistakes, problem of insufficient transparency of complete process, that would disable citizens to acquire argumented judgment on which level and in which way prescribed criteria were implemented in practice, should be emphasized. Besides that, we feel that it is very important, that in the steps towards further reform, significance of establishing accountability system of judges and prosecutors, as well as the reforms in regards to organization of judiciary system should be built on the basis of previous functional analysis.

28. Republic Broadcasting Agency • „The procedure by which RBA members are appointed continues to raise concerns about the independence of this body. Access to advertising in the media remains under the control of a few economic and political actors, entailing a significant risk of influence on the media and of self-censorship. Transparency of media ownership has yet to be ensured. The implementation of the media strategy needs to be speeded up.“ • TS Comment :  In this part the EC report well notices some of the main problems because of which media do not provide larger contribution to fight against corruption. Related to these matters, one should emphasize that Coalition Agreement of current ruling parties envisages dedication of attention to these matters, but it remained unsaid in which level will the reform base on previously adopted media strategy.

29. Overall EC– chapter on corruption • Overall, the implementation of the legal framework for fighting corruption has continued. The Anti-Corruption Agency’s operations increased, mostly in relation to the financing of political parties. However, corruption remains prevalent in many areas and continues to be a serious problem. A new Anti-Corruption Strategy and Action Plan are still awaited. The implementation of the legal framework and the efficiency of anti-corruption institutions need to be significantly improved. Further efforts are needed to adopt a more proactive approach to investigating and prosecuting corruption and the judiciary needs to gradually build up a solid track record of convictions, including in high-level cases, particularly in cases of misuse of public funds. Stronger political direction and more effective inter-agency coordination are needed to significantly improve performance in combating corruption.