Transaparency International in Bosnia Herzegovina (TIBiH) in cooperation with the Embassy of Sweden in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the occasion of the International Day of Freedom of Access to Information, today organized a conference called “New Law on Freedom of Access to Information – Progress or New Challenges in Access to Information”.
The aim of the conference is to exchange experiences on the implementation of the law on freedom of access to information in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and review the process of preparation and adoption of the new law that was recently adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
During the conference, the results of research on the transparency of public bodies in the country were presented, and the participants also discussed the potential challenges and progress that the new law brings in access to information in the work of public institutions.
Chairman of the TIBiH Board of Directors, Srđan Blagovčanin, said that the most current thing, when talking about the state of freedom of access to information in BiH, is the recent adoption of the new law on free access to information at the state level.
“TIBiH, as well as numerous other non-governmental organizations and the media community, strongly criticized the adoption of that law for several reasons. In our opinion, the manner in which the law was adopted, as well as the solutions contained in that law, was also controversial. The law itself was adopted completely ignoring the comments, suggestions and objections that came from civil society. More than 200 comments and suggestions were ignored by the Ministry of Justice and the Council of Ministers and sent the request to the procedure. Not only was civil society and the media community ignored, but also the fact that the EU Delegation in BiH also expressed a great deal of criticism towards certain solutions contained in the law. Also, certain state institutions and bodies criticized this law,” said Blagovčanin.
He believes that the key problem with this law relates to the fact that in the case of an appeal, according to the new solutions, the second instance authority in exercising the right to freedom of access to information is actually the Appeals Council at the Council of Ministers, and that that authority does not meet two key criteria, it is not independent and does not have the appropriate amount of expertise.
“Also, the criticisms were related to the expansion of exceptions, leaving a lot of loopholes and possibilities for interpretation and reinterpretation. In our opinion, this will create major problems in application,” Blagovčanin assessed.
In his opinion, what is positive is that the new law provides for the proactive publication of information that has not been legally regulated until now and that should be welcomed.
Despite this, he believes that according to the TIBiH court, the adoption of this important law took a step backwards and that it is a bad message to the citizens.
“The current situation, as we had under the existing law, under the entity laws, is not at all encouraging. After 20 years since these laws were adopted, a number of problems still appear in the implementation itself. First of all, the publication of information related to the financial aspects of business institution, especially on the publication of various types of contracts on the use of funds. In this sense, TIBiH, which has been monitoring these procedures from the very beginning, notes a very unsatisfactory level of application of this law,” says Blagovčanin.
He states that there is no need to be particularly reminded that there is always or very often a degree of suspicion of corruption, when the authorities are not ready to publish information and that usually illegal activity or illegal business is hidden behind it.
