The draft and procedure for the adoption of the FBiH Civil Service Law are also unacceptable

Banja Luka, 10. October 2015 – The Government of the Federation of BiH violates the procedures and carries out legal violence in the process of determining the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Civil Service, ignoring the Office of the Government of the Federation of BiH for Legislation and Compliance with EU Regulations and the Complete Public.

Namely, the Office for Legislation gave an opinion on the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Civil Service, which points out numerous shortcomings in the procedure itself, but also in the content of the Draft. Transparency International BiH has already warned that the proposed changes seek to provide even greater political influence on the selection of staff in public administration, and that the claims of the FBiH Government that they want to save and rationalize are unfounded, because it will actually put additional burden on the budget.

The opinion of the Office also states what TI BiH itself pointed out – that the proposed provisions completely undermine the “principles of professional impartiality and political independence”. It also points out the issue of the future status of executives whose proposed changes deprive them of the status of civil servants, which is not defined in the Draft, as well as how these officials will be redeployed to other positions if there are no vacancies. We remind you that TI BiH has already pointed out the fact that these changes will lead to finding 250-300 new positions in order to redeploy officials, which will produce multimillion costs and additional accumulation of the administration.

Finally, the Office for Legislation considers that this Law could not have been nominated as a draft, but as a preliminary draft, and calls into question the very procedure of its consideration and determination.

TI BiH considers it particularly worrying that the Draft Law was determined without obtaining the opinion of the Office, because the Draft was submitted only before the session of the FBiH Government. This, as well as the fact that he was sent to the Parliament by urgent procedure, additionally speaks of the intention of the Government to place these solutions at any cost, without consulting and considering their merits.

The question is in whose interest the FBiH Government is acting, if it ignores the professional public and its own procedures, and whether it is worth returning the complete public administration reform to the beginning only to further enable the recruitment of politically suitable staff.

TI BiH appeals to the FBiH Parliament to stop the controversial amendments to the Law, which not only make the role of the civil service meaningless and contradict the principles of the Public Administration Reform Strategy, but also abuse the process of its creation and referral to the parliamentary procedure.

Press rls – 10 10 2015 doc

Opinion_Civil Service Act