Final consultative meeting about implementation of the Law on preventing conflict of interest on the level of local self government held in Belgrade

In the conference room of City Assembly, today was held the last in the series of consultative meetings about implementation of the Law on preventing the conflict of interest in performance of public function which Transparency Serbia organized in cooperation with Republic board for resolving conflict of interest. Members of Assembly, city and municipality councilors, officials of city and municipality administration and officials from public enterprises from the city of Belgrade and city municipalities attended the gathering.

At the beginning , Belgrade Mayor, Mr. Nenad Bogdanovic and Secretary General of Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities Mr. Djordje Stanicic addressed to participants. Mayor pointed out the significance of this and other mechanisms for securing public accountability and control over public authorities' work and pointed out to some very important dilemmas that were actual in the time of passing of this Law in National Parliament, like those about level of publicity of data, by so giving good proposition for further discussion. Mr. Stanicic reminded participants of activities of Standing Conference that have, among else, as a goal to support implementation of this Law, and over all, to the Code of Ethics for local self - government officials which is already adopted in almost all city and municipality assemblies of Serbia. After introductory speech of the President of the Republic Board, Mr. Milovan Dedijer, local officials in conversation with representatives of the Board (except for president, present were members of the Board, prof. PhD Branko Lubarda, prof. PhD Ljubinko Radenkovic) had the chance to clear up their dilemmas about implementation of certain provisions of this important anticorruption regulation.

The most of the questions were related to filling a report on property and incomes of public officials; publicity, the way of keeping information that officials deliver in their reports of property and incomes; compatibility of prohibitions from the Law on local self government with limitation that are for officials on the basis of Law on Preventing the conflict of interest; possibility of parallel functions in organs of municipality and public institutes; justification of certain statutory prohibitions for the officials that aren't professionally and full time engaged as members of the parliamentary boards, some negative consequences of the Law on preventing conflict of interest to the possibility of control of the work of local public enterprises; legal attitudes of the Board regarding participation of officials in process of public procurement…

Before the beginning of the consultative meeting for the officials, press conference was held on which Deputy Chair of City Assembly, Mr. Zoran Alimpic presented many dilemmas of officials and other functionaries regarding the implementation of the Law on preventing the conflict of interest, for which there is a need to be resolved in direct communication of officials and members of the organ that is authorized for the supervision over implementation of the Law. Also, Mr. Dedijer introduced journalists at the press conference with the information about officials' respect of the Law on the city and city municipalities level on the occasion of annual filing of property and incomes. Respect of the Law in Belgrade is on the higher level then in large number of local municipalities in Serbia , but still stays as a large problem question of officials of city public enterprises from which less than half fulfilled their obligation.

This gathering was held with the help of City Parliament and Mayor's cabinet.