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Međunarodna konferencija “Borba protiv korupcije u Srbiji: primena propisa i izazovi“ Beograd, 8. i 9. decembar 2005. godine Organizatori konferencije: Misija OEBS-a u Srbiji i Crnoj Gori Napomene priređivača Na stranicama koje slede čitalac može naći izlaganja učesnika međunarodne konferencije, koja su preneta u obliku u kojem su izrečena tokom konferencije (transkripti tonskih zapisa). Izlaganja su preneta na originalnom jeziku koji su pojedini govornici koristili (srpski ili engleski). Unapred se izvinjavamo svim govornicima zbog eventualnih grešaka do kojih je došlo pri zapisivanju njihovih izlaganja sa audio-traka. Tekstovi nisu autorizovani. Iako smo svesni da ovakav način objavljivanja može za posledicu imati da neki od izloženih stavova pojedinih izlagača ostanu nedovoljno jasni ili nedorečeni za čitaoca, smatramo da će i uvid u ove zapise biti od izuzetne koristi svima koje zanimaju teme konferencije i razmatranja načina za efikasnu borbu protiv korupcije u Srbiji, regionu i svetu. Čitalac takođe treba da ima u vidu momenat održavanja konferencije, odnosno činjenicu da su mnoga izlaganja bila uslovljena razvojem situacije u primeni antikorupcijskih propisa koja je bila aktuelna početkom decembra 2005. godine. Svi ovde izloženi materijali mogu se koristiti slobodno u nekomercijalne svrhe, pod uslovom da se na primeren način navede izvor, kao i napomena da je reč o neautorizovanim transkriptima. Korišćenje u komercijalne svrhe moguće je jedino uz prethodno pribavljenu saglasnost organizatora konferencije i govornika. Organizatori konferencije ne snose odgovornost za eventualne netačnosti i greške, kao ni za iznete stavove pojedinih učesnika u diskusiji.
Sadržaj Uvodna izlaganja Predrag Marković, predsednik Narodne skupštine Republike Srbije Prva sesija: Finansiranje političkih stranaka između propisa i prakse Prof. Vladimir Goati, Transparentnost Srbija Druga sesija: Zakoni o sprečavanju sukoba interesa i etički kodeks kao sredstvo u pospešivanju odgovornosti javnih službenika Catherine Woollard, Regional Director of Transparency International, Berlin Treća sesija: Sprečavanje korupcije i promocija integriteta u javnim nabavkama Mila Konikovic, Legal Adviser on Economic Transparency, Rule of Law and Human Rights Department, OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro Josip Bogić, Uprava za borbu protiv organizovanog kriminala (UBPOK), Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova Republike Srbije Četvrta sesija: Specijalizovana i nezavisna antikorupcijska agencija Goran Vujović, Odeljenje za međunarodnu saradnju i evropske integracije, Ministarstvo pravde Republike Srbije Verica Barać, predsednik Saveta Vlade Republike Srbije za borbu protiv korupcije Zaključak I dan Uvodna izlaganja
G. Predrag Marković, predsednik Narodne skupštine Republike Srbije: Ovo je dobar dan za temu o kojoj ćemo razgovarati. Ovde ćemo čuti ljude koji su ovde kao rezultat procesa protiv korupcije jer su i kod nas najzad formirane institucije protiv korupcije na čijem su čelu. 9. decembar je Međunarodni dan borbe protiv korupcije.
Ambassador Maurizio Massari, Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro
We sad many times and I repeat today that corruption is very bad thing for variety of reasons; first of all it is bad for democracy. It creates dysfunctional institutions, if you have corruption in any of the institutions it doesn’t matter where there, it is Parliament or it is the police, of course this institutions could not work properly and democratic practices lose out of this corruption practices. It is bad for the economy, because it is creates diversion of economic resources, it discouraged foreign based investments and so on. It is bad also for human rights because ordinary citizens are penalized by corrupted practices within in public administration particularly. So basically, corruption as we sad at the times an riches the few and empowers the many and for that reason it is a problem that needs to be talked, addressed seriously at all levels in a comprehensive way. I want to stress a comprehensive approach in fight against corruption. Certainly we can have a stock taking exercise on the pieces of the legislation which have being adopted in this year in that area and I think that we can be relatively satisfied for the amount of legislation which is being adopted in various sectors of prevention of conflict of interests and public procurement, financial of political parties, the creation of anticorruption body plus other important pieces of legislation like free access to information, Ombudsman, the state audit institution. But, of course legislations in itself is not sufficient to address the problem of corruption seriously. Because legislation can remain a piece of paper unless it is implemented properly and a focus on implementation should not be forgotten should not postponed. It is time to focus, to concentrate our efforts on an implementation of legislation. And to implement legislation is important to have a strategy to plan in advance the human and financial recourses which are needed to implement the laws. But, it is not only about legislation, it is about general picture of a state regulation. In all countries where ever you have excessive state regulations such regulations create fertile ground for corruption. And so it is another aspect, I would sad it is needed to be look at in a more general way. Certainly there is a corruption which is also linked to the transitional state of the economy, to certain kind of economic depravation, law salaries in public sector that we expect to be gradually over come the moment that the economy of this country picks up and reaches to the level of a main stream European economies. There is an also cultural aspect that it needs to be stressed; political culture which is inherited from previous years, the history which of course also play is the role. And also in a sense public awareness, active engagement of civil society, and the rule of the media here is very crucial in order to highlight the problem of corruption and to make institutions accountable for that problem. I talked about institutions but there is also a private corruption which is none less serious problem, so I think that we should addressed the corruption in a comprehensive way, both, public and private. I also would like to mention impotents of having in this comprehensive approach to corruption, impotents of having this national anticorruption strategy which is going to be voted now in the Parliament, approved and implemented whit a very clear road map and the engagement of all the institutions as sun as possible. I think it is important to just as today’s event and discussion really for kind of honest, frank, critical when necessary example of where we stand in the fight against corruption in Serbia and from that we can draw some conclusion, recommendation that can be useful not only for the government and the institutions in the country but also for international partners which starting of course whit the institution that I represent here, but also the other institutions from Europe and bilateral donor recommendations that we could have in our mind in order to adopt our strategy of assistants to the new environment. Because, of course the situation today in Serbia is not same as it was 3-4 years ago. Now it is a country in transition and picture is ever changing, and we have to take in account this kind of changing. Let us also in conclusion stress that we need to have a candid discussion about this problems because when you talk about corruption, Serbia is not special. This is problem which exists in also most developed countries and is common problem, due in transitional societies when the rules and institutions are not that consolidate. Yet of course, corruption has more chances, more opportunities to prosper and to grow in all the different directions of social, economic and political life. I would like to say that the right legislation provides the blueprint the pattern which a nation will need for dealing with corruption in all forms in which it can appear. There have been enormous advances in Serbia and Montenegro and also in Serbia and Montenegro separately during the past 5 years since the fall of Milosevic, but there is also a problems, this paradox I think is neatly summarized by the most recent transition reports of OCED to European bank for reconstruction and development which says a lot of very positive things about new legislation in Serbia, but it also does focus on the fact that the corruption is a problem, and if I could quote, for example in Serbia and Montenegro firms on average reported more problems with judiciary and corruption than 3 years ago, similarly bribes are paid more frequently to get things done compare with 2002.y. So there clearly is a problem, and it is a problem that needs to be addressed. I’d like to say something about UK, but I’d like to say first that I am not speaking with any complacency, I am not saying that every thing is perfect in the UK, I am not saying that things do not go wrong, certainly their have been problems and issues that needed to be addressed. But I think that I am very fortunate to represent a country where corruption does not play a part in every day life. I live in country where citizens could engaged with government institutions without having to pay extra for services that are theirs buy right, Where everyone has equal access and no one could jump to the front of the queue for a particular public service, where there ones talking about health, access to hospitals, or education by providing a bribe, or by knowing the right person. We are fortunate in UK but in order to maintain these standards we must relay on good legislation and even more importantly on institution that ensures the legislation is put in to practice and fully implemented. For corruption flourish many different people need to be included, there must be someone in position of power who is willing to sale his services, there must be a buyer for dose services and police and judiciary must be ether willing to look another way, or be so incompetent that they’ve do not notice the corruption that is taking place. In short if corruption is to triumph there has to be a culture which actually supports corruption. So what in brief has UK done in recent years to ensure that such a culture dose not flourishes? In 1994 year the committee on standards and public life was set up by Parliament. The committee which reports directly to the Prime Minister is responsible for examining concerns about the standard of conduct of all holders of public office. They make recommendations for changes to ensure the highest standards and proprieties and correctness in public life. And if I am right, since it was set up the committee has produced I think 10 reports which have resulted in a number of changes being made. This have included a new codes of conduct for members of Parliament, the establishment of an independent Parliamentary commission of standards, a new regulatory regime for political party funding, and changes to the ethical framework for the local government. And this is only small part of their work. But committee is only the one of institutions, it is one of the most important, but it is one of the networks of institutions, there are many other bodies in Britannia whit the responsibility for implementation of standards and investigating abuses at all levels of government. The Parliamentary commission for administration, more usually non as Parliamentary Ombudsman, has a responsibility for investigating complains from members of the public, this complains have to be refer thru a member of the Parliament. But if a member of a public believes that he is being unfairly treated, as a result of bad administration than that case goes to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. And the Parliamentary Ombudsman is independent of government, and I think I am correct in saying that his conclusions and decisions are final. At the level of local government, complains of corruption and misconduct are often dealt with by local Ombudsman, or local commissions as a network for not only the government but a network of people who hold similar responsibilities, looking at certain aspects, many aspects of public services in the UK. And there are separate arrangements for the devolved assembles in Scotland and Scottish Parliament, and also in Wells. In short if a member of a public in the UK believes that an a official is guilty of corruption or have acted improperly, has abused power, the public have a body that will hear their complains, and they can feel confident that this body will have resources, both human and financial, and the independence and legal backing to take the appropriate action. I should also like to mention the responsibilities of the police and courts of law, if corruption is detected it is quite likely to involved a criminal offenses as it is natural that there should be a criminal prosecution. One of the areas which I think it is of interest is the relationship between the administrative bodies such as the Ombudsman and the role of police and prosecution office. And finally a review of steps against corruption in UK would be incomplete without the mention of media. The British media plays a very important role in ensuring that the Government employees at all levels conduct themselves in correct way. Of course the press can get it wrong, they can be unfair and they can also be irresponsible. But a free and independent media is one of guaranties of proper standards in public life, and I remember just under year ago we were involved in running another conference when a journalist who are involved in a case which was very well known in Britannia and was called “Cash for questions “where group of journalists uncovered malpractice buy members of Parliament who were effectively receiving bribes from companies or individuals to rise issues in the house of Commons. Some of the journalists who were involved in this program took part in the seminar here in Belgrade, and I think what they got to say about the ethics of journalism when dealing whit this sort of issue was a fascinating for all of us who were their to hear the discussion. So I like to conclude, by expressing my confidence that Serbia has a genuine desire to deal with the problem of corruption. In doing so Serbia will improve the lives of government officials and anyone caring responsibilities while improving the life of citizens of this country. It will be the important step in moving the country closer to its aim of joining the EU. As you know we are delighted that during the British presidency that the start of stabilization and association talks have got underway. But improving standard in public life is important part of this process, this movement toward the EU, and we think it is something that has to be constant and unrelenting interest and involvement of anyone who takes part in public life. I wish that conclusions and discussions from this conference will benefit the making public life in Serbia free from conflict of interest and corruption. Mr. Rastislav Vrbensky, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative (Deputy Head of Mission) The key mission of UN development program is to support development and to fight poverty. The negative impact of corruption on development is no longer in question. Corruption hinders economic development reduces social services and diverts investments. Evidences all across the globe also show that corruption disproportional effects the pure. Corruption also undermines the trust and confidents of general public in constitutional institutions and economic and governmental structure, which is extremely important especially in transitional countries where very painful economic reforms and structural reforms needs to be implemented in many sectors. That’s way the anticorruption becomes one of the key priorities UN development programs globally, regionally but also in Serbia and Montenegro. Obviously we are not the only one recognizing that anticorruption is not an issue which will be exclusively present in transitional or developing countries. It is an issue which is also present in developed countries so it really requires global respond, and that’s why UN has adopted in 2003.y. a Convention against corruption, and it is extremely promising that Serbia and Montenegro ratified this Convention in October this year. When ratified, countries are going to be obligated to comply with the convention and to put in place legal framework, and police framework to fight corruption. It is also very promising that as we speak right now Serbian national assembly is discussion anticorruption strategy which clearly shows commitment of government to deal with these issues. Issue of corruption in Serbia is broadly recognized, it is recognized internally when we look at the opinion pose about key problems in society. Corruption has scored very high and has been recognized as the fourth most important problem in society after poverty, unemployment and general crime. When we look at the visibility study for the EU integration, anticorruption efforts is one of the key preconditions for Serbia and Montenegro joining EU. So it is also recognized external. What we do as EU development program to support government but also civil society in Serbia and Montenegro to fight corruption? Well, we perceive corruption predominantly as the issue related to good government; we believe that’s the demonstration of weak and dysfunctional institutions, lack of rules and weak civil society. Our responses could be divided in to two areas; we have sector responses and cross sector responses. In terms of sector responses we believe that functional public administration is the key precondition to fight corruption. We are supporting government of Serbia in implementation of public administration reform. We are also supporting government of Serbia in implementation of decentralization supporting Standing conference of cities and municipalities, but also supporting municipal polities in building their public management capacity, because we believe that that’s the precondition to fight corruption on local level. Secondly, we believe that judiciary place a key role in fighting corruption as well, thru judiciary training center we have being supporting professional advancement of 1000 judges in court and magistrates in Serbia. Lastly, role of civil society in anticorruption effort is indisputable and we are supporting civil society organizations in their capacity building and we are pleased that Transparency Serbia is one of co-organizers of the conference. Beside sector approach, cross sector approach and a comprehensive approach is also extremely important and we just received funding from our global fond to support Serbia and implementation.
G. Rodoljub Šabić, poverenik za informacije od javnog značaja
Fenomen korupcije predstavlja jedan od najstrašnijih fenomena iz nasleđa režima koji je pao 2000. godine. Pre samo tri godine od instrumenata za borbu protiv korupcije nismo imali gotovo ništa. Posle pada režima zatekli smo stanje u kome je polovina sredstava za finansiranje državnih funkcionera bila vanbudžetska i kretala se tajnim tokovima, što je bilo idealno za cvetanje korupcije. Sada imamo Zakon o sprečavanju sukoba interesa, zakone o finansiranju stranaka, javnim nabavkama i slobodnom pristupu informacijama od javnog značaja. Normativni okvir za borbu je jako važan, ali ne i dovoljan. Pored okvira neophodne su i institucije. Kada je o njima reč, imamo problem u njihovom uspostavljanju. A kada ih uspostavimo ili stvorimo temelje za njihovo početno delovanje, problem nije rešen. Jer tada tek treba početi sa radom. Imajući u vidu četiri zakona: o javnim nabavkama, sukobu interesa, finansiranju političkih stranaka i slobodi javnih informacija, tri su dobila sesije na današnjem skupu. Ali se nije dovoljno govorilo o slobodnom pristupu informacijama. A mora se govoriti više. U donetim zakonima, naročito kod Zakona o javnim nabavkama, nismo iskoristili uticaj javnosti na sve procese trošenja budžetskih sredstava kroz javne nabavke. U pogledu pristupa podacima o imovini političkih funkcionera, zaštita privatnosti jeste svetinja, ali vršioci funkcija nemaju isto pravo na zaštitu privatnosti. Institucija poverenika za informacije od javnog značaja je počela sa radom, mada se kod nas još uvek održava mentalitet koji ne korespondira sa činjenicom slobodnog pristupa javnosti informacijama o radu državnih organa. Dominantan je i kod građana koji nisu navikli na traženje i dobijanje informacija, ali i kod onih koji su na vlasti i nisu navikli da podnose izveštaje o trošenju novca, radu i sl. Borba sa tim problemom će biti ozbiljan proces i traži dobro koordiniranu akciju. Zato, kada govorim o slobodnom pristupu informacijama od javnog značaja, osim na papiru, nema mehanizama nadzora nad primenom tih zakona. U zakonu stoji da je Ministarstvu kulture poveren taj nadzor, ali im istovremeno nisu obezbeđene ni materijalne, ni logističke, ni organizacione pretpostavke za stvarni nadzor. A to je zabrinjavajuće. Država je dužna da te pretpostavke obezbedi. Ne funkcioniše ni mehanizam prekršajne odgovornosti. U preko sto slučajeva iz prakse poverenika za javne informacije konstatovan je očigledan prekršaj zakona. Te informacije su dostavljene nadležnim ministarstvima, ali procesuiranja nije bilo. Ignorisanje činjenica da ne funkcioniše sistem kaznenih normi znači stimulaciju onih koji zakon ne žele da primenjuju. Pitanje je kako napraviti mehanizam za rešavanje problema. Jer, primena je uslov važenja prava. A nama trebaju efekti primene prava i rezultati. Prva sesija: Finansiranje političkih stranaka između propisa i prakse
Moderator
Reći ću nešto o Zakonu o finansiranju političkih stranaka. U finansiranju političkih stranaka ima mnogo novca. Ljudi su osetljivi na sitnu korupciju kao npr. u zdravstvu i sudstvu i nikada ne govore o milionima koji se obrću između šefova i lidera političkih partija. Primena novog zakona je počela 2004. godine. Njime je omogućeno veće finansiranje političkih partija u odnosu na prethodni. Mi nismo svesni da partije u parlamentu same odlučuju koliko će para dobiti. Gde je onda tu ograničenje? U našem slučaju na 0,15 %, što je 4 miliona EUR. Mada stranke traže povećanje. Nemačka, koja prednjači u ovom zakonu, ima limit po kojem dobijena sredstva ne smeju da prelaze dohodak koji se ostvaruje od članova. Ako parlament odredi velika sredstva strankama, one neće biti zainteresovane za članove pa će ostati bez njih. A demokratija ne funkcioniše tako.
Mr. Marcin Walecki, IFES – Center for Transitional and Post-Conflict Governance, Washington DC Presentation in ppt you can take over here What I like to do in my presentation, because I am limited in only 20 minutes, I would like to share with you experience of other post communists countries and try to describe some regulations which we have in post communist countries, problems with implementation and suggest my recommendations how we can improve situation in Serbia based on experience in other post communist countries. The first and most important question is why should we control political parties and their financing and I will quote the recent research prepared by Transparency International which argues that in 36 of 62 countries survey political parties are rated by general public as institutions most effected by corruptions. Certainly this was case in my country which is Poland and as was case in many other transitions countries. Political parties are perceived as dose democratic institutions which have most problems with systems corruption. But in fact the most experience western democracies, temporary western systems are far from being perfect, are far from being ideal and I am very grateful that we have a chance to listen to presentation from chairman of commission for standard of public life because the report which their prepared on founding of political parties in UK was a major galvanizing factor for reform happening in other European countries. Going back to certain central European countries, dose countries which were coming from post communism backgrounds, first of all had a problem regulating this issue not surprisingly during the communist time where no one was very much concerned how to regulate finding of political parties. And I am sure that we could have a long discussion how it was done here in Yugoslavia, while in Poland the communist party was basically ordering Ministry of finance to make a transfer, and it had its own economic activates over 1200 companies and properties which they were renting out. That was the way that was finance during the communist time, bur as the result of collapse of communism we had to regulate this issue. I am not surprised that you have three attempts, three different laws regulating this issue in Serbia, we being trying to regulated in Poland and in many other transiting countries over the last 15 years, in Poland we have about 10 attempts to regulate this issue. But general lesson from all the post communist countries is that in edition to regulating, and I am glade that the speakers mention it earlier, the number one challenge is implementation, very often we tried to regulate the different aspects but we could not successfully implement the basic provisions, and this is what I am going to illustrate in my presentation, so when we look at the level of legal requirements, level of regulating this issue the post communist countries comparing to western countries have a pretty high level of regulations. 88% of all the post communist countries have this closure rules, 100% of countries have a banning of foreign donations, 59% of countries have a spending limits, 47% have a contributions limits, direct public founding 82%, enforcement agencies, if any, 100%. I don’t have enough time to go to all the aspects of dose regulations, many of them are very important for control over founding of political parties; I will only focus on the last item which are enforcement agencies, the agencies which are responsible for control how they are organized and how they operate. But, before I move to enforcement agencies, if I can make one comment to support what prof. Goati sad about funding, based on published experience in other transition countries, public funding very often was perceived as magical solution to political corruption. Some people were arguing if we introduced significant public funding political parties would not have to relay on corrupt sources of funding. There is no research; there is no direct indication that high level of public funding will stop corrupt funding of political parties. In fact, and I support what professor says was public funding and I am sorry to compare political parties to alcoholics, but unlimited public funding is like invitation to the bar which you give to political parties, drink as much as you can, as much as you want, so if you do not have a bar tender who will decide when and how much they should drink you certainly have a problem. But in edition to the bar tender you also have to have a policeman who is making shore there is no drinking from illegal source, because this will certainly contribute to them getting poisoned. So I am to talk about this policeman, about enforcement agencies and how to make shore that we enforce all those other regulations. If you look at the recent recommendations made by the Council of Europe, the Council of Europe make the very strong point that we should have independent monitoring in respect to all the aspects of funding of political parties and election campaigns, that this monitoring should include supervision of account of political parties and expansion involved in election campaign as well as their presentation and publication. Further more the recommendation suggest that the state should promote the specialization of other enforcement agencies such as Judiciary police, prosecutor office, and I am going to show you how it is done in other countries. When we look in post communist countries, in fact in 9 countries we still get governments, usually Ministry of internal affairs, Ministry of justice dealing whit this issue. In 58% of countries we have independent national electoral management bodies; in other cases we have special created bodies. In 5 countries it will be very difficult to describe those agencies, in case of Romania it is state auditor office, and in other countries supreme audit courts are also involved and are different tasks and here we come to details and in fact when you talk about effective control the most important thing is what are those asks. How far the enforcement agencies can go when comes to controlling sources of funding and expenditure? Can they design reporting forms and reporting procedures? Can they receive audit or non audit reports, can they review themselves, those reports, and can they order external audits? Are they obligated to public those reports, to public only reports, summaries or they are obligated to public also audit reports? Are they allowed to initiated inspection and public inquires, and are they allowed to executed sanctions? I am afraid that we actually have 4 public agencies involved in controlling funding of political parties in Serbia. The law says that Ministry of finance is responsible for designing reporting forms, so in fact Ministry decides what sort of information would be made public. And I have been told yesterday that there is new law which also allows the supreme audit court to look at accounts of political parties. That is perfect invitation to no control. If you have 4 bodies they will spend 80% of time coordinating the activates they control, But Moldavia has 5, so you can also create additional bodies, you can also involve certain Ministries but the best solution is to have one major agency, just like Council of Europe recommended, independent which than ask other agencies to support its activates, can ask for cooperation. But the best solution, the best practice is to have one strong agency which can impose strict control over all major aspects of party financing. But when it comes to other lessons from post communist countries, let assume that in all other countries when we were trying to reform the system, all the politicians have good intention, that was certainly case in Poland, when we introduced substantial public funding, over 100000 million USD for 4 years period, for all the political parties surprise, surprise one provision one article which were saying that 10% of this fond should to Central election commission for control disappeared. So the Parliament was in favor of public funding but was strongly against public control. Also how comprehensive are the financial reports I have seen the copy of one report in Serbia and maybe I have seen the wrong copy but as far as I can recall it was only one page, was summarized, So those reports could be very comprehensive and Bosnia and Herzegovina is very good example. Bosnia requires the basic report is 15 pages, requiring loans, credits, depts., in kind donations, all the financial operations, asides, or you can only require 1-2 page summaries. Very important is for what sort of information is report asking, my suggestion would be that report should ask at least for who is giving, when, to whom, what is the amount. And in some countries you also require information about employer, so you have situation were if company gives a bonus to stuff and than stuff transfers money to political parties you can very quickly spot it. In fact this is done in 2000.y. when the Polish President gave bonus to 90 people on his stuff and than later 87 of them made donation to his champagne, obviously pure speculation dose not indicate connection between those two acts. Very important question is who and when can add those reports, what is happening as result of financial audit. When I read the law here, and I fully agreed whit you I don’t see deadline for submission of reports, I don’t see any deadlines for publication of reports. Doses are the fundamental problems if you don’t provide deadlines you will never see the reports. How far could agencies go when investigating the cases? This is very important question, in many post communist countries, agencies can not investigate, they could go ask for receiving reports auditing and that is it. If they see cases of irregularity they can probably refer to prosecution, they can refer it to other agencies and publish report and than it’s all over. The fundamental question is what about sanctions, are to propose it ineffective? When why I read the law I can not really understanding who is imposing dose sanctions? And I fully agree whit you the catalog of sanctions should be certainly extended. One of the most effective sanction in post communist countries is to withdraw or to suspend public funding, if you do not submit your report you do not get public funding, if you falsified you report you do not get funding. If you refuse to cooperate with enforcement agencies your funding is suspended. And in fact another very important lesson from many post communist countries is that you should not only limit yourself. When it comes to control financial reports of political parties you have to have a holistic approach, agencies have to cooperate. This is the vicious circle. I will not describe that in details but political parties are not operating in isolation toward the state, to state companies, to what we call oligarch. If you do not control public contracts, if you do not disclose information’s public about public contracts, if you could not see which companies are benefiting from public contacts from business whit state, if you could not control assets disclosure of politicians, of candidates if you could not control individual possession you we never be able to put all this puzzle together. This is topic for another presentation. But what I am trying to show here is if you want to introduce holistic control, holistic approach you have to control asset disclosure of candidates and politicians, public contracts, donations done by companies and individuals. Only than you would be able to see who is giving to whom and for what reasons. Otherwise if you only read summaries of financial reports you would not be able to understand what is happening. So, what we can learn from other established democracies and from the best practice. Wish list: So what can we learn from other established democracies and the best practices from post communist countries. The first and the most important thing for successful system of control is strong non partisan enforcement agency, agency with clear leadership and I would like to say that in my opinion and I’ve been walking in 15 post communism countries, the agency with best leadership was election commission in B&H. The leadership of the commission in B&H in my opinion is the necessary factor to they’ve success. If the commission can not act, you can always complain about imperfect laws, you can always complain about lack of sources of funding, but the leadership will contribute to the real changing. Another thing for us to consider and this is experience of certainly western democracies UK, election Canada, and federal election commission. I think that our commission, our control agencies will have to look at the issue of real time enforcement. Real time enforcement or real time disclosure means that we are not waiting a year after the election to deal with the issue. When we see the problem we acted immediately this certainly applies to cases of vote buying, illegal funding and abuse of state recourses. Also one of the major problem in our post communist countries is a lack of full disclosure, we only disclose partial information’s, we do not disclose all the financial transactions. Another lesson learns is that you have to have comprehensive audit, desk audit and field audit, random audits. Some countries go out as far as audits during elections. If you provide political parties with state funding you have to control them for the whole political process, not just for 90 days after the elections. Another very important lesson is that you have to relay on external control, you should allowed No government organizations and mass media to submit complains, and commission an enforcement agencies have to take dose complains seriously. It was certainly the case in Ukraine and other countries for many years where enforcement agencies were refusing information’s coming from media and N.G.O. saying that there is no legal bases for them to make such complains. Four more lessons learned and I will repeat again, if you are thinking about reforming your system the most important lesson is first of all you should introduced public control, only then significant public funding, without bartender, without policeman you will allow alcoholic to have full unlimited access to the bar. And reporting and disclosure is important element, operational integrity, while if you want to have control body which is effective, then the body has to be an accountable itself, it has to be independent, only then it would be professional. I will strongly recommend you to look at lesson learn from other post communist countries where internet and web-sites are widely recognized as an excellent tool to publish this information’s, searchable data bases. We implemented dose in 8 countries. And finally but not less important thing is education. We are talking here about long term commitment to change political life in our transitional countries, and all this reforms can only be achieved for education. It is an obligation of the enforcement agencies to educate political parties, to educate candidates monitoring real time enforcement and finally penalties and sanctions very quickly things to consider when we talk about control. We often forget that the major job of political parties is to win elections, it is not to comply with the law, and this comes second. But this should not be the case for control bodies for enforcement agencies, for them enforcing the law should always comes first, regardless of who wins the election, and that’s the major problem. I can tell you the case from Poland, we have situation where one of the campaign managers was involved in illegal funding of elections and few year later he become persecution general. How can we refer case to persecution general against him? Finally, I would like to mention that as an academic as an expert I’ve seen two most successful cases of public control in central Eastern Europe. One was done in Litvania and another one from B&H. But if I can give you example of Litvania: as result of database which we publish together with central election commission, we’ve been able to provide media and N.G.O. with all the financial operations of presidential candidates. You can see that there is one company “Avian Baltic” which contributed to president Paskas campaign significant amount of money, thanks to the real time enforcement medias and N.G.O. were able to verified financial reports and were able to see who was supporting campaign and this company was connected with Russia organized crime, and later on based on this information’s they’ve being able to see what sort of connections President had with Russian organized crime and the President was impeached. An all of it started from analyzing financial information of his campaign. The final point I like to make is strong control an optimal formula for every country and the simple answer is no. If you asked me, I believe that semi authoritarian regimes countries which do not commit themselves to democratic practice should not introduced strong control. This control mechanism could be abused by regime to horrors opposition parties and asking for financial information does will undermine the operations for dose democratic parties. So all those things I’ve mention to you should only be applied to the country and regime that is generally committed to democratic principals.
G. Jurij Toplak, Pravni fakultet u Mariboru, Slovenija
Govoriću o sistemima finansiranja političkih partija, izbornih kampanja i slabostima i prednostima koje se javljaju kod finansiranja iz budžeta, kao i o problemu kod promene partija poslanika. Različiti su izvori finansiranja partija u svetu. Prvi sistem i najstariji je da se partija finansira od privatnih donacija, članarina, donacija sindikata i korporacija. Drugi sistem je iz budžeta i koristi ga veliki deo istočnoevropskih zemalja, a treći sistem je mešoviti, i prvo i drugo. Postoji i četvrta mogućnost izbora kada se partije odlučuju za samo jednu opciju, kao što je u SAD. Presentation in ppt you can take over here As a representative of political party I would like to talk a bit about the UK experience of party funding laws and about how we deal with them on practical bases. Actually as a party official, dealing with them every day I would like to talk thru briefly about the election commission in the UK, about how it was set up and what it does, and than I would like to talk about sources of public funding in the UK. There are some ones that are quite limited. And than briefly talk about the impact of this which is still relatively new law to us in UK, has had on how we actually function on day to day in terms of implementation those laws as a party. The first thing I would like to do is to say what I actually do as the complying manager which is essentially to say that I am day to day responsible for ensuring that the Labour party keeps within the law in terms of the party across the country, which means both the paid stuff part of the national level and the volunteer parts, and we have about 700 organizations spread across the country who are run by volunteers and law applies to them as well and our job is to puts system in place to make sure that we do comply, a practically than to actually file the documents with commission. As you can see the relatively new body of the election commission that we have in UK as was established in 2001.y. in response to reports from neo committee in Parliament. It was a manifest of commitment of Labour party to set it up. It took time to establish, but it was set up in 2001.y. and it is being functioning since than. So, it is now been thru two British general elections and a number of elections in our devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wells. It is directly responsible to Parliament; it is not responsible to government. It is funded by Parliament and it is Parliament decision of how much funding they get. They spend 25 million pound in they’ve last full financial year on covering a lot of different functions and they’ve employed an average of 150 stuff, now we employee in the Labour party about 200 stuff full time, most of the other parties employs actually less than that. The key thing about commission is when they were established, the idea was to make sure there is no question of public confidence in this body. That it was not too connected to the parties, that there is no cozy relationship with existing politicians, and that they’ve effectively represent the voter’s interest as oppose to the politician interests. Nobody can work for election commission or be in the election commission if they’ve been a member of a political party in last 10 years. There has been an issue in the sense that they don’t really understand how does political party works, and there was question where will you find people interested enough in politics to want to work full time in the electoral commission but who are never actually been a member of party. We take usual British solution which is to recruit Australians. But I think that has been the key feature that they are totally independent of us, and that they’ve not been involved in party politic at all. The commission actually have a very vide range of functions. We told people this morning about having a single body to look at all of aspects of party funding and election law. And one of the key things to the commission was to bring a number of different functions together in this single body. The firs idea is to actually register political parties, now until recently there were no real requirement for political parties to registries in terms of they structure at all. It has lead all the major parties and a number of small parties to regularized how they function, because we have to file a constitution with the commission, we have to file a financial plan explaining what we are and how are party units work, and what are relationship between different parts of the parties in terms of funding and in sense of the register that if you do not register political party candidates can not stand the elections using the name of your political party unless you are registered as such. They have to stand as independent. So, if you want to be a political party you have to be registered and there is a system were by the certificate has to be given by the registered party to every candidate before they can use the name. The next thing they do is probably the prominent public function is they receive a reports from parties about donations they’ve received from various bodies and how much they’ve spend in the elections. How dose donation reports have to be given to the election commission. Quarterly, so we file 4 a year. What we have to file is when we receive money, how much money did we received and what is the identity of donor. We have to confirm that those donors were permissible donors and that has to be signed of by individual in the party who is responsible for the accuracy of the reports. In the Labour party that individual is the general secretary who is the senior paid official with the party, and he has personal responsibilities to ensure that they are correct. All those reports are than published on election commission web site, usually couple of weeks after we file them. You talked about earlier on real time monitoring of elections and actually during the period of general election we have to file a donation report every week, rather than every month, for money we actually received during the election period. The next thing they do is to obviously monitor party accounts. As I sad we have to file accounts every year, for the national party, and local party units who have income over 25.000 pounds, also have to file their own accounts. National parties have to file their accounts within 7 month of the year end and local parties with in 3 months of the year end. The forms of this accounts is very similar to the forms of corporation’s accounts. It is quite detailed in terms of what we have to file, we have an issue about was the corporate accounts was entirely appropriate for volunteer party, but it is certainly that it is a high level of disclosure that is required. The other point to be mentioned that the donation report is not simply from political parties but it is also from candidates. If you are an individual MP or other local elected official and you receive money directly, and in UK not much money is paid directly to the individual candidates, it tends to go to their party organizations, but they also file as well. In terms of the spending reports at the elections we have to file for all of national elections if you spend large amount of money within 6 month a detailed report of how you’ve spend it and I’ve actually recently compiled and filed a report for the Labour party for the last general election. And you have been mentioned reports of 3-4 pages and our reports come in 15 volumes which are about 4.500 pieces of paper, because we have to file a copy of every bill that is sent to us, for all the expenditure that we ensure. So, pretty much we have to file everything we spend a year before election. And it is ultimately public available, so it is very detailed from that point of view. And it is actually incredible time consuming to comply, but that’s the sort of level we talk about. Other things they do, other key party funding function of the electoral commission, they have a general function to review election laws, because some of our laws dated back from 19 century and actually election commission has been reviewing all of them. And that has been a very useful function because previously you would thing politicians are very interested in election law because it is how they’ve get their offices. Surprisingly, their interest in them are in election time and than they tend to forget about them for the next few years, so election laws tend to became more rebound and it is useful to have an outside body who will actually look at the law to see does it need to be updated. They’ve also increase in taking on the function of setting electoral boundaries obviously we have majorateran system so local action boundaries are fairly crucial function as who do you represent us a canceller or as an MP, that is a function that is gradually being taken over by the commission. They’ve also, to the extend that we have or will have any referendums in UK; the electoral commission will actually be the body that runs that referendum. And the final function they’ve have is as well as regulating political parties and setting all this boundaries is that they’ve actually have obligation to promote participation in democratic processes and they’ve have a budget for that purpose and they run public information campaigns encouraging people to registered to vote and encouraging people to actually vote in the elections. So they are a publicity body for general goodness of voting as well as actually regulating the parties. This commission is very much about public funding of politics. In the UK we actually don’t have any general public funding of political parties. We have historically raised funds from membership and from donations and to some extend from commercial income from properties which we have historically owned. But there is no general funding, there is not to say that there is no public money finds its way to political parties in the UK because increasingly money dose. The electoral commission itself has about 2 million pounds which every year they give to political party’s representatives in Parliament to fund the development of public policy so we get about 4.400 pounds for the Labour party every year. The allocation is linked to basically your representation in Parliament and that is money that we can only spend on policy development, but is money paid directly from commission to the parties. The second sort of funding is funding to opposition parties, the essence being that the government has the recourses of the civil services to carry out its policy development and to support it in its activities, and the oppositional parties do not have those resources, so public fond are made available to them. The total pay to all oppositional parties in all of the bodies is about 7 millions pounds a year. That money although is paid to parties in based of party representation, it is not available to them for political campaigning, it is only available to them to support they work in various Parliaments. The key thing that is actually a campaign payment is that in every Parliamentary election every candidate is entitled to send one piece of election literature to every registered voter free. Now that seem a relatively small thing but the value of that most constituency is about 10.000 pounds worth of free postages. And those 10.000 pounds is roughly the same amount as your other allowed spending in the election. So, it is quite significant. The other thing we have is heavy restriction on political broad casting so the political parties can not have paid TV or radio advertising, what is given to us instead is set number of slots during election campaign in which we can put our own political broadcast, we paid for they production cost, but they are broadcast as a obligation. And it is for the major parties in the last election, we have 5 broadcasts of couple of minutes each during the election campaign. As I sad the key thing about these things is this money is paid to parties none of it is free for parties to use as they see fit, all of it is specific money paid for a particular purpose and actually looking at that sort of funding there is no centralized payment made. Again the donation reporting regime was new for us in 2001.y. which imposed the sort of restrictions that I think is common in most countries. Now donations to political parties may not be made by persons from outside the UK and that includes the ex patriot Britain’s who live across the seas, unless they are still registered voters across the seas. No sort of public body can make a donation to political party and the key thing that I think is different in many respects here is that we don’t in any way keep how much any individual can give to political party? We don’t limit how much money we can raise. What the law does is limit how much we can spend at election time and for election purposes. So we could build enormous sums of money but we could not actually spend it. The spending period for election is one year before hand. So, the view is if you spend a lot of money more than a year before hand the electoral are forgotten all about you. Your limits spending no income so any individual can give as much as they like. Corporations can give money to us an that includes corporation who have public contracts with government, trade unions certainly can give money to political parties, obviously main party well about 2/3 of our donation in come still comes from trade unions. I mean for the Labour party trade unions form the Labour party and still are substantial constitutional part of the party so we are in very close relationship and there fond are very substantial. The level in which donations have to be checked to see that, they are from permissible person is 200 pound and anybody can give us lass than 200 pounds. But donations over that must be checked to see that they are from permissible persons so we record all of dose and we again collect that data every quarterly. From all of our party units which is 700 people reporting to us their income for that time. Once dose donations go over 500 pounds and that limit is really set to say the point of public donations reporting, so that public know who is funding political parties. So if there is a perception that giving money to political parties may buy you influence or may give you some sort of input in how that party behaves. Idea that you can’t buy a political party and we obviously decided that the level at which you maybe could buy a political party is 500 pounds. So that’s the limit that we report publicly. It is 100 pounds for individual elective members and for local organizations were the 100 pounds will be significant to them, not significant at national level. I mean our income in a non elective year is about 20 million pounds. So it is a fairly law level set against total income. And all of dose donations are publish on the web site of electoral commission every quarterly. The limits are not what we raised but on what we spend for historical reasons. We do have two sets of limits as on limit on each individual candidate and what they’ve could do promoting themselves by name in their constituency. That limit varies with the size of the elections but average is about 10.000 pounds available to spend in 5 weeks which is typically our election campaign from that it is called to the time of the pooling day. We also have national limit set on registered parties, it is calculated 30.000 pounds per constituency but there is no need to spend that money in any giving constituency, we can spend it how we like across the country. It is just less than 19 millions pounds for the last election and us and Conservative parties spends just under 18 million pounds against our limit, and are reported on last election. Now that funding were does it come from, it comes from membership income, donors and in our case many are trade unions and we do also raise money other forms thru admission fees, the parties conferences, thru again we do historically owns some properties and rent money from them. The issue that I think is being current for the parties in the UK is this law is now about 5 years old and is going to be reviewed and there is a question of what’s the impact being actually on political parties in the set. One thing certainly has happened is that we have an increase media scrutiny of donor, the fact that they’ve have a list given to them every 3 months. Mean that it guaranties small story in every newspaper every 3 months about who giving money to whom. This week there has been per sift to be would that mean that some people would be reluctant to give money because they don’t whish to have public scrutiny of what they’re doing with their cash. Obviously we will take view of that supporting political parties is perfectly, noble and legitlement activity, but that you have to expect the people want to know about that and that you can not be anonymous an you must expect that if you give a significant money it will be publicly reported. Now what has happened to extend in UK is all do there was sort of very hidden media interest in early days when suddenly all dose information’s was made available that previously had been secret, so that they’ve had to have leak stories which is obviously more popular than to look this up on a web site. Over time the level of interest in donations to all political parties is certainly gone. It is more seen as quite normal that people donate money to political parties frequently as the same people giving money over time so somebody new turn to give us money will be of interest, somebody who may be in some connection with government or government office will be of interest or giving particularly large amount of money. We in a Labour party have Lord Sainsbury who has given us million of pounds over the last few years. The fact that he has given us millions of pounds is now very well known. How much exactly has he given is of interest to anybody. In terms how does it works if you actually are the party, there is no question that introducing law of this type does mean that political parties have to behave differently in terms of they’ve day to day organization. I sad that we have increased appliance costs that tends to mean my salary and the salary of one other stuff member so we did actually have to set aside time and many simply to deal with complaining with this law. Again if you have 700 party organizations that you need to report from every 3 month, I mean that is quite a substantial exercise to go trough and as I sad the report we put together are also significant we’ve had to change our internal accounting system, we’ve had to set up new procedures to ensure that we do comply with the law. We want necessarily the best party in complying with the law when we first introduce it because I think we had under estimated how much time and effort is involved in meting these limits. But we have now done that and in fact just before this election we invited the election commission come and review all of our system on a voluntary bases to tell us if we are doing things correct or are we doing things wrong. They’ve got the legal power to come and order it to any political party if they feel that is necessary. We are obliged as a large party to have a professional order of it done. Any way on all of our returns that we actually invited the commission to come and look at us and to say if it is anything wrong with us we have a relationship such that we felt they’ve would tell us this is what you need to being doing to comply with our rules and they’ve had similar discussion with some of the major parties as well. But it does have to become engraved in the culture of your party that this is necessary, I think that people disagree with policy of this and they understand it is important for democracy that this is done. Practically all trough that other people will say that we were busy, particularly the voluntary level because volunteer are not interested in finance and in file returns, they’ve have to be made interested in that and they’ve have to be supported quite substantial by professional part of the party to make sure that they can met that burden. It is not acceptable from they to say I am to busy to do it, it is acceptable from they to say I need you to training me how am I to do this and we have this extensive training program for people who are not accountants, to understand some of the basic of what they need to do in terms of file this accounts. I would say overall impact on us has been positive in a sense that the idea that we are corrupt in a sense that we are receiving money from unknown sources were does your money come from, what sort of people are behind you, I feel that has faded as an issue in British politics because we had actually brought this information out in the open. Some people may disagree with me on that but I think that it is better to be in the open, it certainly has been significant burden on the parties to actually make it happened and that has been my experience that’s what we do, hopefully it is useful.
Diskusija: Gđa Lidija Korać: Izborna komisija BiH je državna institucija koja se finansira iz državnog proračuna i koja osim izbornog zakona implementira i dva bitna zakona za proces demokratizacije, a to su Zakon o sprečavanju sukoba interesa i Zakon o finansiranju političkih partija. Ovde smo čuli pohvalu da izborna komisija može raditi dobro. I za nas je zakon o finansiranju nova materija, jer smo kao i sve postkomunističke zemlje dobijali zakone koje je trebalo da implementiramo a da nismo ni znali o čemu se radi. Zato je bilo neophodno da se i mi edukujemo u vezi sa Zakonom o sprečavanju sukoba interesa, u saradnji sa stranim kolegama koje imaju iskustva u tim oblastima, i da na taj način steknemo poverenje javnosti, kao i političkih partija. I da na taj način postanemo respektibilna institucija koja će biti u stanju da implementira zakone. Važno je edukovati i političke partije jer ih neznanje ne oslobađa odgovornosti. U saradnji sa nevladinim organizacijama, sproveli smo širi krug edukacije političkih partija da bi bile upoznate sa materijom i izdali smo i niz korisničkih priručnika o ovom zakonu, popunjavanju svih izveštaja itd. U Bosni imamo nekoliko vrsta finansijskih izveštaja, pre svega na godišnjem nivou, ali i pred izbore, kao i posle izbora, koji su vezani za finansiranje izborne kampanje. Sada smo u fazi da smo uradili kako uredsku reviziju šest najvećih partija tako i reviziju na terenu, u sedištu partija, ali i u regionalnim kancelarijama političkih partija. I mi možemo kroz kompletnu reviziju da utvrdimo da li je došlo do nezakonitog finansiranja stranaka. Uskoro ćemo javno objaviti sve podatke. Znamo da smo uspeli u tom poslu po tome što uživamo podršku javnosti. Treba još ojačati državne institucije i odgovornosti onih na koje se zakon odnosi. Naše osnovno načelo je visok stepen zakonitosti, kao i nezavisnosti i profesionalnosti. Posle dugog niza godina, napokon radi nezavisna institucija i svojim radom je i pokazala da može da bude nezavisna i profesionalna i da radi po visokim standardima. Pored poverenja javnosti, mi uživamo i poverenje političkih partija. Dalja edukacija nam je jako bitna i to moramo da poboljšamo. Ali izborna komisija ne može sama da uradi sav posao jer ne postoji institucija koja može sama da dođe do konačnog cilja. Slaba tačka nam je podrška medija. Uradili smo projekat «Novac i politika» i nalazi se na veb-sajtu. Žao mi je što mediji ne koriste pravilno te javno iznete podatke, nego ih subjektivno koriste navijajući za svoje favorite. Akademski milje bi takođe trebalo da koristi te podatke da bi se radile analize i pomoglo komisiji da se otkrije da li i u kom segmentu postoji nelegalnost u finansiranju partija. Nadam se da će na osnovu dobro postavljenih temelja za ove tri godine i ovaj problem biti prevaziđen i da ćemo doći u situaciju da nemamo elemente političke korupcije. Mi u zakonu imamo i segment sankcionisanja i podnošenja kaznenih prijava, mada je naš cilj preventivno delovanje. Zato želimo da pošaljemo poruku da postoje pravila i da ukoliko se krše, može se izreći i kazna zabrane učestvovanja na izborima. G. Nemanja Nenadić: Pomenuo bih neke stvari vezane za primenu Zakona o finansiranju političkih partija u Srbiji. Kod nas postoji više organa za primenu zakona ili pojedine aspekte njegove primene. Danas treba da bude usvojena Nacionalna strategija za borbu protiv korupcije, a u završnom delu te strategije se pominje da će buduće nezavisno i stručno antikorupcijsko telo imati za zadatak i kontrolu finansiranja stranaka i izbornih kampanja. Finansiranje iz javnih izvora u Srbiji ne predstavlja opasnost kao u nekim drugim zemljama. Čak i one stranke koje dobijaju najviše novca iz budžeta države i lokalnih zajednica ne dobijaju dovoljne sume da bi mogle da se olenje i dozvole sebi nerad. Postoje, naravno, i ekstremni slučajevi, ali ih je veoma mali broj, a svim većim strankama ova sredstva predstavljaju možda 50 % sredstava koja su im potrebna u toku godine. Suština priče o Zakonu o finansiranju stranaka iz 2003. godine je da treba napraviti bolji model kontrole. Sav trud koji su uložili Odbor za finansije i Izborna komisija nije dao očekivane rezultate. Kontrola nije ispunila svoju funkciju jer zakon nije unapređen tamo gde su uočeni nedostaci niti su stranke poboljšale ponašanje u odnosu na zakon. Takođe, jedan od ključnih aspekata je obezbeđivanje i pristup informacijama i svim dokumentima, kao i njihovo javno iznošenje i objavljivanje podataka o donacijama većim od 6 000 dinara, kao i upotpunjavanje finansijskih izveštaja. G. Miodrag Milosavljević, Centar za slobodne izbore i demokratiju: Centar je radio monitoring finansiranja jedne izborne kampanje u Beogradu. Beograd smo odabrali kao najozbiljniju regiju, u kojoj se troši najveća suma novca, a na osnovu analize koju je prethodno uradio «Transparency« na predsedničkim izborima. Analizirajući primenu Zakona o finansiranju stranaka na lokalnom nivou, došli smo do sledećih zaključaka. Analitički okvir je polazio od pitanja da li je zakon omogućio obavljanje normalnih funkcija političkim strankama, da li je obezbeđena kontrola finansiranja političkih stranaka, kao i transparentnost finansiranja, na kojoj se mnogo insistiralo pre usvajanja zakona. Odgovori su bili NE u sva tri slučaja. Nisu obezbeđene normalne izborne kampanje naročito na lokalnom nivou, niti dobra kontrola, kao ni transparentnost. Na primer: na kampanje za izbor gradonačelnika je potrošeno dva do pet puta više nego što je zakonom dozvoljeno. Ali tragikomično je da je u pojedinim opštinama izdvajano svega stotinak evra za kampanje, na osnovu čega su i građeni limiti za prikupljanje sredstava iz privatnih izvora. Iako su se ljudi iz Republičke izborne komisije trudili da što bolje primene zakon, pokazalo se da ipak nisu nezavisni i da nemaju sredstava da adekvatno obave kontrolu, kao ni obučeni kadar. Ostalo je nepoznato da li Izborna komisija može da naloži lokalnim organima da im dostave podatke za kontrolu izveštaja. A nakon izbora izveštaji nisu objavljeni, pa su donatori ostali nepoznati. Dr Vesna Pešić: U Srbiji postoji fundamentalnije pitanje od mehanizma kontrole i načina finansiranja partija. Postoji potpuna dominacija partija nad državnim institucijama, administracijom, sudstvom, čak i potpuna akumulacija funkcija gde nema dovoljno funkcionalne diferencijacije da neko može da bude nezavisan. Nezavisna od partija nije ni izborna komisija ni tužilaštvo i kada se promeni vlast partije na vlasti, mogu da promene sve funkcionere na primer u policiji, i to ne samo ministra nego i sve načelnike i funkcionere u tom delu državne administracije. Sva javna preduzeća, gradska, komunalna preduzeća popunjavaju se isključivo partijskim ljudima, pa čak i mesta šefova biblioteka i pozorišta. Sada imamo proporcionalni sistem na lokalnom nivou, pa se partije dogovaraju i postavljaju čitave armije svojih aktivista i tako dobijaju ogromnu moć nad državom. U stvari, imamo devijaciju gde imamo vrstu multipartijskog sistema koji funkcioniše u smislu partijske države. Ta veza nije razdvojena i skrećem pažnju na to da se u rukama pojedinih ljudi suviše mnogo funkcija akumulira. Nije normalno da su poslanici istovremeno i gradonačelnici i odbornici i šefovi partija. Tako imamo da je potpredsednik jedne velike partije istovremeno i gradonačelnik, poslanik i šef jedne komisije u parlamentu. Sve to jedna osoba, što je apsurdna akumulacija funkcija koja nije postojala ni u doba socijalizma. Nemoguće je govoriti o primeni zakona dokle god nemamo ideju o funkcionalnoj diferencijaciji između partije i države. Moderator – zaključak: Jedan organ koji drži celinu stvari u svojim rukama jeste nešto što je preporučljivo. A jak je koliko je jaka i najslabija karika u lancu. Puno se energije gubi ukoliko imamo više organa. Partije moraju imati čvrste limite da ne bi mogle da uzimaju novac od poreskih obveznika koliko hoće. Mora postojati balans između privatnih i budžetskih izvora, moraju se precizirati odredbe rokova, kao i da se uvedu stroge sankcije za partije koje se ne pridržavaju zakona, kojim bi se ukinulo finansiranje iz budžeta.
Druga sesija: Zakoni o sprečavanju sukoba interesa i etički kodeks kao sredstvo u pospešivanju odgovornosti javnih službenika Moderator I am very pleased to welcome you to this session. The topic of the session is accountability of public officials, looking at Laws on Prevention of Conflicts of Interest and Codes of Ethics for public officials. We have a distinguished set of analysts, I’ll start on my left here: Sir Alistair Graham from the United Kingdom’s Committee on Standards in Public Life, minister Zoran Loncar the minister of Public Administration and Local Self-government of Serbia, professor Josip Kregar from the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb and Nemanja Nenadic from Transparency Serbia who will be speaking later and Milovan Dedijer the president of the Serbian Committee for Prevention of the Conflict of Interest and than the final two speakers will be Slobodan Lekovic from Montenegro, president of the Commission for Establishing the Existence of Conflict of Interests and Ms Lidija Korac representative of the Bosnian Electoral Committee. I’ll just say a few opening remarks and then we’ll turn to speakers. I think this topic is particularly interesting because it takes us to the link between anticorruption work and democracy and democratic reform efforts. How to realize democracy by insuring that the public interest prevails? And will be covering both technical issues, institutional and legal design, and also normative issues. How to generate and preserve values in public life? An extremely sensitive area of work. Transparency International in South east Europe has worked extensively on the issue of conflict of interests’ prevention. We consider it essential to as a precondition for further anticorruption reform but is also essential for insuring consolidation of the broad of democratic reform efforts. Our national chapters in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia have carried out extensive work on conflict of interest prevention. Looking at firstly design of legislative reform in this area, campaigning for legal changes, but also accompanying this with work on training public officials, media campaigns public education work in order to insure that legislative reform is accompanied by changes in political culture. And without further a due I turn to mr Zoran Loncar, and I will ask all the panelist today please to respect their fellow panelists and speak for the prescribed fifteen minutes as we have such an interest in certain panelists we want to make shore to hear everybody speak. Thank you. G. Zoran Lončar, ministar za državnu upravu i lokalnu samoupravu U osnovi reforme same strategije državne uprave predviđeni su Zakon o sprečavanju sukoba interesa i etički kodeks. Bez reforme državne uprave nemoguće su integracije u EU. Vlada je prvi put usvojila dokument o strategiji reforme državne uprave u Republici Srbiji koji počiva na opštim principima evropskog administrativnog okvira sa adekvatnim planom i rokovima za njegovo sprovođenje. Tu je iznet i osnovni koncept za narednih pet godina. Sprovođenje ove strategije je nemoguće bez ozbiljne borbe protiv korupcije. Radimo na tome, ali je to još uvek nedovoljno. Borba mora biti dobro organizovana. Osnovni cilj u ovoj borbi je svođenje korupcije na nivo evropskih zemalja. Izuzev nekih ustavnih normi koje su regulisale položaj predsednika Srbije, nismo imali odredbe koje sprečavaju sukob interesa u obavljanju javnih funkcija. Postojala je samo jedna odredba, koja se odnosila samo parcijalno na ministre, zamenike ministara i funkcionere koji su vodili posredne organizacije i druge funkcionere u državnoj upravi. Nije postojala ni jedna druga odredba. Zbog identifikacije ovog problema i nepostojanja normativnog okvira, naš programski prioritet je bio hitno donošenje propisa koji bi spadao u set antikorupcijskih propisa. Shodno tome, za ove dve godine ostvarene su sledeće stvari: među prvim propisima koji su usvojeni na predlog vlade bio je Zakon o sprečavanju sukoba interesa pri vršenju javnih funkcija. Sa ovog aspekta od jedne godine primene zakona, od kada imamo nadležne organe, vidimo da može biti i bolje. Ali zbog zatečenog lošeg stanja, to je bio prvi propis koji je donet, i to sa željom da ne bude poslednji. Zato još uvek nema formu važećeg zakona. Prva poteškoća u primeni ovog zakona je vezana za konstituisanje Republičkog odbora za sprečavanje sukoba interesa i to je završeno u januaru. I pošto nije bilo u nadležnosti vlade, problem se javio u skupštini. Vidimo da je to složen mehanizam, pa ćemo u budućnosti stvoriti institucije koje će biti životne da zakon ne bi ostajao mrtvo slovo na papiru. Nakon konstituisanja ovog organa, javio se problem pre svega materijalne i prostorne prirode, ali to rešavamo. Zakon je pokazao i dobre strane. Dao je efekte već u prvim danima primene. Rokovi koji su predviđeni zakonom kada su u pitanju vladini funkcioneri su poštovani. Rokovi za podnošenje ostavki ministara i ostalih funkcionera su bili poštovani. Nije bilo lako objasniti političkim funkcionerima prethodne vlasti da ne mogu i dalje da sede u upravnim odborima i da poseduju politički uticaj. Zato sada nemamo nijednog ministra niti lice postavljeno od strane vlade u nekom upravnom odboru. Važno je reći i da je konačno došlo do popisa imovine svih funkcionera, od centralne pa do lokalne vlasti. I nije došlo do zloupotrebe informacija od strane medija. Sir Alistair Graham, Chairman of Nolan Committee, UK Presentation in ppt you can take over here
The Committee on standards and public life was set up in 1994.y. when there were number of political scandals in UK, not list when it came to light that certain members of Parliament had been accepting cash for raising issues and asking questions in part of our Parliament, the main part of the house of commons and as result of that Prime Minister John Major set up this committee on standards and public life under a senior judge Lord Nolan and I am the 4 Chairman of this committee over period of 11 years. Our terms of references were to examine current concerns about standards of conduct of all holders of public office, including arrangements relating to financial and commercial activates an to make recommendations as to any changes in the present arrangements which might be required to ensure the highest standard of propriety in public life, and those terms of reference were amendment in 1997.y. to include considerations of the issue of funding of political parties. We ranged right across the hole of the public sector which is quite substantial in UK, where advisers were not an executive body, we advise the Prime Minister. We don’t have any statutory powers, but we do have considerable influence. If you look over dose 11 years we have set up an independent commissioner to over see all appointments to senior public office, we have set up independent parliamentary commissioner for standards that covers the standards of members of Parliament. Legislation has been introduced to cover, provide, an ethical standard framework for local government and as you heard this morning, as result of recommendation to the committee legislation was introduced to set up an electoral commission. We deal with general policy as you see we don’t deal with individual cases. Having set that lot of people do write to us about individual cases, and we refer dose to the committee as much as anything to try and get a constant picture of what has happening to standards in public life across the UK, and to learn lessons from dose particular individual cases that arise. The UK public service covers 5 millions employees, and the civil service which is been around UK since 1855. Year is only 10% of that public service. There is a strong public service ITOS which is based, very much the people should only be recruited to public service jobs on base of merit and true competitive arrangements. That public servant should provide non partisan, by non partisan I mean non party politic, advice and they should behave with high standards of propriety. And all of this is supported by training and proactive education policy. In the UK we have in part the written constitution and in part unwritten constitution which is not codified and committee on standards and public life is part of that unwritten constitution, and there is a very strong relation on non legal approaches including many codes of conduct for members of Parliament, for public officials and local government and for elected cancellers in local government. The UK traditionally being a centralized country but in recent years under the current government there have been significant the evolution of powers to Scotland, Wells, and rather comes and goes depending on the state of play in Northern Ireland. The approached the committee is currently taking is to try and inshore that standards in public life are deeply embedded in organization culture. This is what we believe in the end makes the differences. You can have laws, and laws are very important in terms of criminal infancies, but it is possible to have forms of corruption which don’t breach the law but which are still damaging to civil society. And we strongly believe if you get standards deeply embedded in the culture of your public service organization that in due course will enhance the public trust, and if in fact you build on that trust in public, in those public service where there is the police, health, education or defense, what ever it may be, they more lightly to engaged whit that service they more lightly to participate and make a contribution which in due course will lead to improve performances. I think that police is a good example of this, where in fact if you have high standards of conduct in the police that rise public trust, than the public will wont to give evidence and information to the police which in due course will improve the light hood in which they going to solve crimes. They going to give high performances to public, at large which will further enhance the trust of the public in that particular public service. So, we believe this is a virtuous circle: get the standard embedded in culture, create public trust, which will produce high performances, which will reinforce once again culture. Now after 10 years of being in existence the committee on standards felt that it should test what was public perception of standards in public life in UK. The first thing that came out of that survey which was over 1.000 people, which was carried out privately in their homes, was that they have very high expectations of people that held public office. And the 3 most important things they wanted was first of all to tell the truth, to tell life as it is and not to, because there’s been accusations in UK that the present government spend to much of its time spinning a good story rather than always telling the truth. Secondly they expected public officers not to take bribes, and they expected them to spend public money wisely. And also you will see some of the other things they were keen for them to do. Dough it is interesting for national politicians that competence came relatively low down on the list, and you might thought that would be higher. We also asked in the survey who do you most trust in public office holders, and the people they have most trust in was their local family doctor, local head teacher and local police officer. And you will see that government ministers they did not trust at all. They came very low down, and the only people who were below government ministers were state agents who sale properties, and journalists of tabloid newspapers. So the experience of survey was that people have most trust, public trust, in the people they could have direct contact with. So, they doctor, local head teacher, police constable, and draw a distinction for example between members of Parliament as a collective group and they own individual members of Parliament because of course in UK we have local concisions where a member of Parliament represents a defined geographical area. So, they draw a distinction between the members of Parliament as a collective body and an individual Member of Parliament. Now, the key question for all of us, I think, is how you achieve this ethical organizational culture which can build up this public trust and high performance of public services. Well, we strongly believe that good quality leadership which sets the tour for standard setting in public organization, and of course it is not what leader say, it is what leaders do themselves. That is the most important thing, its actual people’s behavior that is what set the tour, and because people careful watch leaders and see actually how they go about their job and take their queue. So, if the leadership is weak or the leadership is corrupt than they own behavior will be weak and corrupt and we believe that there are a number of things that are crucial to trying to achieve an ethical culture. First of all you constantly got to keep testing as we did survey, what is the reality against your perception, because leaders and senior people in organizations have a grate habit of believing things are better than their actually are. And their for it is important to keep testing your own perception against reality of what people are seeing it like at grass roots level. Secondly, you need to have a regular approach to self assessing your own performances in terms of ethical standards and try to benchmark yourself against other organizations. For example I myself check police authorities in UK, and I know that in some police authorities they have what is called a pier group assessment, where by one police authority will go to another police authority and check they’ve standards against their own Which is some time useful and cost effective of going thru some self assessments and bench marking exercise. And, finally important thing is to not only have a control and the codes of conduct and procedures in place, but to be constantly checking that they’ve been applied, and that people understand them, because we have a body called the ORDIS commission in UK who regularly have to publish reports about when some thing gone wrong and usually when they’ve checked that something is going wrong it is not there were not system in place they were not codes of conduct and they were not procedures or there were not ordered committees or what ever the machinery mite be, but there were not being effectively applied or they’ve being badly understood and we think that approach is important in trying to achieve this ethical organization culture. Under pending all the work we do and this came from very early part of the committee on standards was the seven principals of public life which were announced by committee in 1995.y. and these are general principal that could be applied anywhere across the public sector. And which detailed codes of conduct are drawn and all of this 7 principals deal with conflict of interest management. And these are the 7 principals: The first one is selflessness. The selflessness is about holders of public office who should act sourly interns in public interests, they should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves they’ve family or their friends. The second principal is integrity, where holders of public office should not placed themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individual organization that mite seek to influence them in performance of their official duties. The third one is objectivity and I think that one speaks for it self, particularly in making public appointments or awarding contact, recommending individuals for reword or benefits. You should take that decision based on objective criteria and evidence. Fourth principal is that you should be accountable for your decisions and actions to the public. The fifth one is that you should be open for examples were there people’s state of assets should be available in public. Where leadership as sixth principal as I’ve already sad is crucial and seventh and final principal is honesty. Now those seven principals of public life we were recently been doing some further work to see have we got the language related around this principals right, dose the word like selflessness for example mean a great deal to people of UK and some of the feed back we’ve so far for example sad that we had not always got the language right. For example the wording we use to support honesty people wanted to put much higher emphases on telling the truth. Telling things us they are owning up to mistakes if mistakes are made, and demonstrating that you learned the lesson from those mistakes. So, the principal for managing conflict of interests is first of all to ensure that one is distinguished in between public interests and private interests. That one supporting mechanism and transparency so that if a member of public has got a grievance against public body and they’ve want to find out what exactly are the interests of the member of the board. Who took that decision and that they can have easily access to that information. That we should be promoting individual responsibility and personal example thru high quality leadership and we should be creating an organizational culture in tolerant of conflict of interests. And here we got 3 pillars supporting managing conflict of interests; we have got this crucial one of organization culture what we called ITOS. We have got clearly the law, you need law to deal with corruption and we have 5 laws related to corruption in UK and they need to be supported by detailed codes of conducts and codes of practice. There is one final principal that I would like to touch upon and that is proportionality. It is important that the system that one puts in place do fit the purpose for which they are designed and are not disproportional. For example our committee is recently considered the present arrangements for ethical standards for local in government. And we decided that they are disproportional because all of the complaint that came from the public due to the central body are investigated and they’ve got so many complaint they could not co-opt, there is great back log, people are very dissatisfied, and we seed that whole should be reconstructed so that the emphases is sitting out at the local level. The complaint that are trivial and concentrating on a really serious complaints about conflict of interest, corruption or what ever it mite be. So it is important that we don’t over regulate or develop systems that are disproportional to the purpose that are trying to achieve. I think we made considerable progress in UK on standards and public life but the survey that I gave some examples still show that there is considerable gap between what we as a committee mite believe is reality in the UK and what are the perception of the public is. And our task now is to try to narrow that gap between that what we believe to be the reality and the public perception and that’s job not just for committee on standards but for everybody who operates in public life. G. Milovan Dedijer, predsednik Republičkog odbora za rešavanje o sukobu interesa, Srbija Prezentacija u ppt se može preuzeti ovde U periodu donošenja zakona imali smo izvesne teškoće, kao i kod konstituisanja odbora, koji je ustanovljen zakonom, za sprovođenje ovog zakona. Pre njegovog donošenja nismo imali propise ili zakon koji je regulisao ovu materiju sukoba interesa, već smo imali samo jednu normu koja je sprečavala nespojivost vršenja funkcija kod ministara i lica koje postavlja ministarstvo. Usvajanjem ovog zakona stvorene su normativne i faktičke pretpostavke za borbu protiv sukoba interesa. Jedna od prvih odredaba koja je jako dobra i omogućava dobar rad je konstituisanje odbora kao nezavisnog i samostalnog organa. To nije samo deklarativna konstatacija. U daljim odredbama je sprovedena do kraja. Da bi se odbor prihvatio kao takav organ, bilo je neophodno ispunjavanje izvesnih uslova, pa se tako članovi, kojih ima devet, biraju iz redova Srpske akademije nauka, i to pet od deset predloženih. Tri člana bira opšta sednica Vrhovnog suda, a jednog člana bira Advokatska komora Republike Srbije. Druga karakteristika je kako članovima prestaje funkcija. Propisano je da odluku o prestanku funkcije donosi sam republički odbor kada se ispune određeni uslovi, a inicijativu može dati skupština ili na primer opšta sednica Vrhovnog suda, to jest organi koji ih i predlažu. Ovo je nešto što je novo kod nas i nije predviđeno čak ni za sud koji je samostalni organ. Treća karakteristika je finansijska samostalnost ovog organa. Budžetom su predviđena sredstva za rad. Takve odredbe nema nijedna zemlja u okruženju, što nas izdvaja. Naravno, imamo i neka loša rešenja u zakonu.
Prof. Josip Kregar, Pravni fakultet u Zagrebu | ||