New violation of the Law on Public Enterprises

Transparency Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International) indicates that the statement of the Minister of Economy on competitions for directors of public enterprises, confirmed fears that we presented at the time of the adoption of the Law on Public Enterprises, in terms of quality of legal norms and willingness to implement them at least on a formal level.

The deadline for the competition for directors of public enterprises expires on 3 March 2017. Minister of Economy Goran Knezevic announces (https://goo.gl/5opB9Q) competition "in the days to come" and violating of deadline for just "a couple of days," adding that it is not significant because it is "more important to organize competition properly, to secure applying of the best individuals who will manage these large systems."

This may be by the opinion of TS, reassuring statement if the Law on Public Enterprises that was adopted in February 2016, provided short transitional deadline for organizing competitions, and that due to parliamentary elections, or any other specific reason, there was not enough time to implement these competitions. However, the deadline was as much as one year, which we assessed as too long period http://www.transparentnost.org.rs/index.php/sr/aktivnosti-2/pod-lupom/8197-apel-poslanicima-da-amandmanima -Fix-law. Namely, harmful and illegal "acting director status" lasted for several years at that time, and for the procedure itself only a few months is sufficient. From this statement, or statement of any other member of the Government, we have not heard to what the government spent a period of 12 months from the adoption of the Law, i.e. period from August 2016, when it continued to work in changed composition.

We remind that the Law on Public Enterprises from 2012, and then its successor from February 2016, were adopted with the proclamation of intentions for professionalization of management and removal of party control over public enterprises. But in 2013, due to coalition agreement, in some enterprises competitions were not even announced, and most have not been completed even after several years. This phenomenon is a clear demonstration of the lack of will to implement the de-politicization, even at the cost of a policy violation. Furthermore, deadline was set to the Government for organizing of competition, but not for their completion.

Indeed, the Law from 2016, brought some positive changes regarding the election of directors. However, in regards to timelines it contains a similar drawback - now there is only a deadline by which competitions must be completed, which obviously won’t be respected, but there is no deadline by which they had to be called.

Moreover, Transparency Serbia monitors implementation of the new Law on Public Enterprises on a sample of 30 national and local enterprises. In addition to electing directors, the costs, annual plans, the fulfillment of obligations in regards to transparency, we monitor and control supervisory committees. The research results will be presented by June 2017, but the periodical findings are presented from time to time in the form of comments in the "Under the magnifying glass" section on our website and Facebook page.

Transparency Serbia      

Belgrade, 1 February 2017.