Sarajevo is among the least transparent European capitals

Sarajevo is the only city covered by the survey that did not have its last budget published on the website, and information on the total income of mayors and councilors for 2017 was not available. year.

Sarajevo, 29. August 2019 – According to a Transparency International (TI) pilot study on the transparency of major European cities, Sarajevo is one of the capitals in the red zone, or considered the least transparent. The red group also includes Belgrade, Athens, Chisinau, Stockholm and Yerevan. The most transparent cities or those in the green zone are Tallinn, Vilnius, Pristina, Kiev, Madrid and Prague. Cities are not ranked individually, but are divided into zones (green, yellow and red), as this is a pilot study that included a relatively small number of indicators (14).

Although these are a small number of indicators, they have been carefully selected from over twenty European TI branches to measure access to information on city decisions, public procurement procedures, how city money is spent, content from city council meetings, ethical rules for elected representatives, etc.

The study showed that Eastern European cities in many categories showed better results than the so-called capitals. old democracies. This is attributed to the fact that corruption is more pronounced in these countries, and that there is more public pressure to make all information about important decisions public.

Sarajevo is the only city covered by the survey that did not have its last budget published on the website, and information on the total income of mayors and councilors for 2017 was not available. year. For example, some cities, such as Tallinn and Berlin, provided this information upon request within a few days. All citizens contribute to the income of public servants by paying taxes, so this information should be public. And this is considered a basic standard of proactive transparency that requires that this information be available on the official websites of the institutions.

In most European capitals, citizens have access to information on budgets, public procurement or contact information on councilors, while the most difficult to access is information on the total income of mayors, councilors or their work schedules. The entire survey can be found on the Transparency International in BiH website, in the publication section, and the Survey is available here.

Press rls 8/29/2019