Less than a quarter of the measures provided for the first year of the Strategy has been implemented

Monitoring of the implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy 2015-2019 indicated that most activities planned to be implemented in the first year of the Strategy have not been conducted, and only a small percentage of institutions started with implementation of its obligations

Sarajevo, 4th August 2016 – Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) presented results of the Monitoring of the Anti-Corruption Strategy 2015-2019 implementation and the corresponding Action Plan for the first year of the Strategy implementation.
The results show that out of 61 activities planned to be implemented in the first year, only 14 were completely conducted, 10 of them are still in implementation phase, 18 are being partially implemented, while 19 have not even started.
Some the measures that have not even started yet are the improvement of the legal framework on free access to information, by-laws related to the submission of the financial reports of the political parties, introduction of legal obligation to develop integrity plans for BiH public institutions, defining procedures for proactive approach to corruption exposure, coordination between law enforcement organs and so on.
Particularly problematic is the area of improving efficiency of the judiciary and law enforcement organs in the fight against corruption, where none, out of 8 planned measures, has been fully implemented yet.
A small percentage of institutions, mostly at the state level, has started fulfilling its obligations. Only three cantons (Sarajevo, Bosnian-Podrinje and Canton 10) have fulfilled its obligation of adopting their own strategic documents for the fight against corruption, two are in the phase to conduct the adoption of the same, and half cantons have not met this obligation yet. Strategic documents have not been adopted by the Federation of BiH and the Brcko District, and the Republic of Srpska has the Anti-Corruption Strategy for the period 2013-2017, which is not related to the implementation of the Strategy at BiH level. Nor has the establishment of the bodies which should be in charge of preparing and implementing strategic documents at the lower level of government been conducted either.
Also, some of the measures which are presented as fully implemented, have not been carried out in accordance with the best practice, which can be seen on the example of adopting amendments to the Law on Financing Political Parties that has not brought essential improvements of transparency and political parties accountability.
There were 37 activities planned to be implemented continuously, of which 14 have the status of having been fully implemented, 13 are being partially implemented, while 10 have not even started with implementation phase. These activities, as well as those in the first phase of implementation, have been initiated by either international institutions, within the projects they have been conducting or by civil society, while only a few have been initiated by institutions appointed as the activity holders by the Action Plan.
Dynamic of the Strategy implementation is better than those of previous anti-corruption strategies, but it still does not meet the set up deadlines and there are many delays. The results are not visible yet, since the individual activities have been conducted superficially and only to meet the obligation, but also because of the fact that the implementation of measures at lower levels of government has not started yet. There will certainly be more delays in their implementation and thus the success and the purpose of the entire Strategy and Action Plan may be questioned.
The implementation of the new Anti-Corruption Strategy has the same problems as the previous one – low level of fulfilling the obligations by all institutions, adoption of half-prepared and non-quality solutions, refusal of institutions to deliver the necessary information to the Agency for Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight against Corruption and generally poor coordination of the activities implementation. Therefore TI BiH warns that a legal obligation for all institutions at all levels referring to cooperation with the Agency must be urgently introduced, as well as sanctions for all institutions which refuse the cooperation within the implementation of the measures provided by the Strategy.

Press rls – 4 8 2016 eng