High time to appoint the director of the Anti-Corruption Agency

Banja Luka, June 20^th, 2011. – Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) urges the representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH to appoint the director of the Anti-Corruption Agency for Prevention and Coordination as soon as possible.

The law on establishing the Agency was adopted at the end of 2009, and the deadline for the appointment of the director and staff recruitment was in July 2010. Although it has been a year since the deadline was set, the director still hasn’t been appointed, and the Agency isn’t eligible to work.

For this reason of delays in the establishment of the Agency, all deadlines were exceeded for achieving the goals outlined in the Anti-Corruption Strategy and the accompanying Action Plan, which the Parliament adopted in 2009.

As a reminder, the Law on the Agency and the Anti-Corruption Strategy referred to the conditions outlined in the Roadmap for the liberalization of visa regime, and there is an inescapable conclusion that these documents were adopted so as to meet set conditions since there is no an open willingness for their implementation.

For all the above mentioned, and for a greater concern over the dramatic level of corruption in BiH, TI BiH considers that it’s a high time for the Parliamentary Assembly to take responsibility and comply with the tasks set forth in the already adopted documents, and enable the Anti-Corruption Agency to start with its work. Otherwise, even more time for the implementation of the Strategy will be lost, and the practice, by which all the documents adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly remain only a dead letter, will be confirmed.