Source: : Danas
Awaiting the publication of the perceived corruption index by Transparency International, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, Mr. Rodoljub Sabic, articulates his disappointment over Serbia letting slip an opportunity to significantly improve its ranking this year.
On 25 September, Transparency International will publish its list of world countries ranked by perceived corruption. Last year, Serbia was tied for 90-92 with Gabon and Surinam, with a score of 3.0 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 indicating a corruption-free society.Mr. Sabic emphasizes Serbia's non-observance of GRECO anti-corruption recommendations as one of the lost opportunities. “This largest inter-governmental antic-corruption initiative last year gave us 25 recommendations for improving anti-corruption mechanisms, which were to be implemented by the end of this year. GRECO monitors based their recommendations and deadlines for their implementation on realistic assessments which helped them identify actions that were not only beneficial, but also acceptable and feasible. Even so, most of those recommendations have, regrettably, either not been implemented at all or have been implemented only partially”, Sabic wrote in his blog on the Argus portal: www.portalargus.org/blog.
The Commissioner pointed out that such treatment of GRECO recommendations does little to prove the sincerity of anti-corruption efforts in Serbia.
GRECO is an initiative launched within the Council of Europe and no CoE Member State, not to mention the presiding one, which Serbia is at present, can afford to disregard GRECO recommendations without undermining its own reputation. A typical example is the case of implementation of a key anti-corruption institution - the State Audit Institution. Although the law provided for this institution to be set up more than a year ago, it is still not operating, Mr. Sabic explained.
