TI BiH Wrote to the Government of the Federation of BiH: Inadmissible Decision to Withdraw From the Procedure Laws Necessary for the Fight Against Corruption

Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) sent a letter to the Government of the Federation of BiH due to the unacceptable decision to withdraw two important anti-corruption laws from the procedure, which further delays the fulfillment of EU priorities and the implementation of important reforms in the fight against corruption. The FBiH government has withdrawn from the parliamentary procedure numerous laws that were not adopted in the previous mandate, including the Draft Law on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest in Authorities in the FBiH as well as the Draft Law on the Protection Whistleblowers in FBiH.

Such a decision will additionally slow down the implementation of anti-corruption reforms because some of the laws have already undergone certain procedures and harmonization, and their withdrawal is contrary to the government’s declarative commitment to fulfill the 14 priorities set before the BiH authorities by the European Union.

We remind that the Draft Law on the Protection of Whistleblowers in the FBiH was already adopted by the House of Representatives in June 2018 and has been in the procedure since then, even though its urgent adoption is necessary because the Federation of BiH is the only level of government that has not yet legally protected “whistleblowers” – that is, persons who report corruption in the workplace. This law was submitted in the form of a proposal by the FBiH Government again in August 2022, and now, with the new convocation of the Government, it was withdrawn after so long. On the other hand, last year alone, TI BiH initiated 37 cases where the applicants fell into this category, and most of them came precisely from the Federation of BiH, which did not legally protect them. Please note that such a law exists at the state level, in the Republic of Srpska and Brčko District, and that the citizens of FBiH have been discriminated against for years due to numerous political obstructions.

It is especially inadmissible to withdraw the Proposal of the Law on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest in Official Bodies in the FBiH from the procedure, and it has been 10 years since there is no competent authority in this entity to which conflicts of interest can be reported. According to the current law, that competence belongs to the Central Election Comission of BiH, which was deprived of those competences by changes to the law at the state level in 2013, and for ten years conflicts of interest in the Federation of BiH have gone unpunished. According to TI BIH data, currently 241 officials in FBiH perform more than one function in public enterprises and public institutions, and many have additional engagements in non-profit organizations financed from the budget. In addition to the fact that there is no body that determines the conflict of interest, other institutions completely ignore this law when appointing and allocating public funds to organizations led by officials in a conflict of interest. All of this represents an important source of corruption, and that is why it is necessary to urgently adopt a new law in the FBIH, which in the form of a proposal was sent to the procedure by the FBIH Government in August last year.

Its withdrawal will further slow down the resolution of this issue, so Transparency International in BiH calls on the FBiH Government to urgently return the mentioned laws to the procedure and notes that any further delays will have negative consequences on the fight against corruption.

Press rls_19.05.23_