Category: News and Events

A working lunch took place on March 22 in Topola in Serbia to mark the beginning of the ‘Europe – That Is You’ campaign. In attendance were mayors and heads of 25 cities and municipalities in south and south-west Serbia, from the Pcinja, Jablanica, Toplica, Zlatibor and Raska districts, and they all voiced their readiness to support the activities aimed at bringing Europe closer to the local communities that they represent.

The deputy head of the EU delegation to Serbia Adriano Martins confirmed the European Union’s resolve to give Serbia strong support on its path towards European integration and said that the coming period will be marked by an even more intense cooperation on initiatives coming from underdeveloped or insufficiently developed regions.

“EU funds are open to all projects whose foundation is the development of your communities, inter-municipal cooperation or the strengthening of cross-border initiatives. We will be together on this job and all EU institutions that have their representatives in Serbia will stand at your disposal. However, you are the bearers of these projects and initiatives,” said Martins.

EU PROGRESS manager Graeme Tyndall commented on the results jointly achieved by his team and the local administrations by implementing dozens of projects and stressed that south and south-west Serbia have the capacity to respond to the challenges that the next phase of EU integration will bring.

“If over the past three years we have helped you get some important things started in your local communities then our mission has been fulfilled. However, what is crucial is the depoliticisation of development. The important thing is not that the local president launched a project but for that project to be in the benefit of all members of a community and for it to be successfully completed,” said Tyndall.

European Integration Office director Milan Pajevic spoke about the importance of cooperation between local government units and state institutions. He explained his institution’s role in the system of allocating donor assistance and voiced readiness to assist, with his team, local administrations in improving ways of accessing European funds.

“It is important that we understand each other well and that we know what our goals are. I believe that this campaign will help us get there. The European Union’s support is already noticeable in local communities and we will make efforts to ensure that this also continues to be the case in the coming period,” said Pajevic.

Representatives of the cities and municipalities spoke during the working lunch and had many comments on the cooperation established so far with the EU, the EU Integration Office and the EU PROGRESS Program.

The overall conclusion was that the projects funded by the European Union, the Swiss government and the Republic of Serbia through the programme have produced results which have given the people in local communities a new energy, improved their living conditions and equipped the local administration with new strength to work even more decisively on developing these cities and municipalities.

„You helped us obtain funds so we could improve our people’s quality of life and, by doing so, you made our work easier,” said Jovan Corbic, the president of the Municipality of Raska.

“It is our job to set up a good team, a team skilled in producing developmental projects. Only then can we say that we have been successful in our work,” added Semsudin Kucevic, the head of the Municipality of Tutin.

The database that the BIRN team has been compiling since 2010 is primarily meant for journalists and researchers as well as for all interested citizens. The aim of the Javno.rs  website is to make information about the spending of public funds easily accessible to the wider public.

Javno is devised as a constantly growing resource that is regularly updated. The databases that have been created will be supplemented every year while new ones will be developed, covering fields of interest that we assess as murky areas of public expenditure or as potential generators of corruption in Serbia.

The website currently contains six databases:

1. Discretionary expenditures of the Serbian government, containing information on how the ministries spent public funds on budget lines 423 and 424 Specialised services and Contracted services for 2010 and 2011.

2. Public funds and the media, containing information on how local government bodies financed the media, what particular content they financed, what was the scope of this financing and what criteria were applied during the process.

3. Belgrade promotional costs, a database of the expenditures of the City of Belgrade Administration and city public companies on hiring PR agencies and on promotion.

4. One hundred biggest public procurements, a database of the 100 biggest procurements in the past ten years.

5. Investments for investors, a database on the programme for attracting direct investments to the Serbian state and the employment of new workers over the past seven years

6. 2012 elections, a database of all candidates who participated in the Serbian parliamentary elections in 2012.

The idea for Javno came from BIRN but our many partners helped to implement it: from the British Embassy in Belgrade to IREX.

The key panelists were Michael Davenport, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Serbia, Louis Laurent Stokvis, the Netherlands’ ambassador to Serbia, Rodoljub Sabic, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, Tatjana Babic, the director of the Anti-Corruption Agency, Radoslav Sretenovic, president of the State Audit Institution, Radomir Ilic, special advisor at the justice ministry and representatives of other independent bodies. More than 50 state, NGO and media delegates took part in the debate.

Michael Davenport said that Serbia, with a corruption perception index of 39, is in 80th place out of 186 countries and is recognised as a highly corrupt country.

He emphasised the importance of independent bodies such as the commissioner, the ombudsman, the Anti-Corruption Agency and the State Audit Institution in the construction of high-quality anti-corruption mechanisms.

“All these bodies submit to the parliament their annual reports in which they indicate the identified problems and recommend how to resolve them. In that way they are helping parliament to fulfill one of its main roles, which is the control of the executive branch, and enable better public insight into the work of independent bodies,” said Davenport.

Louis Laurent Stokvis said that parliament has a key role to play in the fight against systemic corruption. He stressed that no country can be satisfied with a high corruption index, especially Serbia, which aspires to join the EU.

“The government and parliament can work together to eradicate corruption and it is necessary to create a practical structure for the systematic fight against corruption,” said Stokvis.

Rodoljub Sabic pointed out that it is a serious problem for democratic society if Serbia does not implement the conclusions made by parliament.

“After parliament has considered the reports of independent institutions and reached a conclusion about them, they become official. It is necessary to have a mechanism to implement these conclusions in practice,” said Sabic.

Radoslav Sretenovic, president of the State Audit Institution, said that the most frequent problems arise during the implementation of the law on public procurement. Sretenovic also emphasised that the authorities do not use the right to list public officials’ financial and non-financial assets.

Ana Jerosimic, a representative of the Anti-Corruption Agency, announced changes in the national anti-corruption strategy reporting process, the extension of the agency’s rights in the fields of supervision of the implementation of the strategy and more accountability for non-compliance with the strategy.

“The new strategy provides that the duty bearers submit to the Agency semi-annual and annual reports, as well as evidence of activities carried out. If the agency is in doubt whether something is done, it will have the right to seek additional verbal explanations,” said Jerosimic.

The conference was the third in a series of public debates addressing topics like corruption, health, education and the economy. The debates are part of the BIRN Serbia’s project to monitor election campaign promises.

The conference was organised with the support of the embassies of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to Serbia.