Implementation of the Law on Prevention of Conflict of Interest-creating the prerequisite for greater accountability of public officials and further support to democracy in Serbia

Transparency Serbia is for years involved in activities that had for goal bringing the regulations from the area of preventing and resolving conflict of interest, as well as in their implementation. Considering that the Law on preventing conflict of interest when doing public functions brought a lot of innovation in legal system of the country, and considering the difficulties in implementation of this law on local level, our organization decided, in cooperation with Republic Board for Resolving Conflict of Interest, to conduct a series of seminars about implementation of this regulations for local authority officials.
Counseling and press conferences  
As part of this project which was conducted from July 2005 to July 2006 seminars and counseling were organized on which members and experts of Republic Board for Resolving Conflict of Interest and Transparency Serbia clarified certain legal regulations and answered to the questions of officials from following cities and municipalities that surround them:

Before every seminar press conferences were organized, on which spoke, except for representatives of the Board and Transparency, hosts (mayors, chairman of municipality assemblies and other high municipality officials).
Round tables and conferences
During conducting of this project several conferences and expert gatherings were organized on which was discussed about implementation of the Law on Preventing Conflict of Interest and other related regulations. Among them stands out international anticorruption conference in organization of mission of OSCE Mission and Transparency- Serbia, with the help of the British Council, which on December 8th 2005 had for subject experiences in implementation of regulations on preventing conflict of interest in Serbia, region and world, and on which, among others, spoke minister for State Government Mr Zoran Lončar, president of the Board for Resolving Conflict of Interest Mr Milovan Dedijer, Sir Alistar Graham, chairman of Nolan Committee (Great Britain) prof. Josip Kregar, dean of Zagreb Law Faculty, Ms Lidija Korać from Electoral Commission of B&H and Mr Slobodan Leković from Commission for Preventing Conflict of Interest of Montenegro. Extracts from this conference you can read on this site here
To some of the specific subjects connected to regulations of conflict of interest was spoken also on the expert round table that Transparency- Serbia organized on January 19th 2006. Detail report from that round table you can find here.
Besides that, at the beginning of April 6th 2006, OSCE, Council of Europe and Government of Serbia organized international expert gathering on which was spoken about proposition of the Law on Anticorruption Agency, on the matter of it’s eventual authority in the area of preventing conflict of interest.
On all of this gatherings Transparency- Serbia, that TS organized or took active part in them, TS used analysis made during this project as well as experiences gained in direct communication with officials to which Law on Preventing Conflict of interest refers to and members of the Board.
Public campaign
Transparency- Serbia directed its public presentation during this project into two directions. First of them: monitoring of the implementation of the Law and inviting the officials to fulfill their obligation of filing annual report on property and incomes in legal time limit. Statements of the organization and extracts from press conferences you can read here.
As part of the project Transparency- Serbia in cooperation with local partner organizations organized public campaign aimed against simultaneous doing of public functions. Campaign material you can take over here.
Special issue of bulletin
As part of the project special issue of bulletin "Transparency" was prepared that was completely dedicated to implementation of the Law on Preventing Conflict of Interest on local level. You can take over bulletin here.
Cooperation with other organizations
As part of this project Transparency - Serbia established excellent cooperation with Board for Resolving Conflict of Interest, also with Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities which was actively engaged on the implementation of Code of Ethics of the local government officials, which is in large part complementary to Law on Preventing Conflict of Interest.
On the Republic Board website Law and By-laws, Committee’s standpoints and information about started procedures in the cases of breaking the law can be taken over. www.sukobinteresa.sr.gov.yu
On the web site of Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities handbook for implementation of Code of Ethic and information regarding its adoption and monitoring of its implementation can be found. www.skgo.org