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.
The Government of FBiH withdrew from the parliamentary procedure numerous laws that were not adopted in the previous mandate, including the Draft Law on Prevention of Conflict of Interest in Authorities in FBiH as well as the Draft Law on Protection of Corruption Reporters in FBiH.
“Such a decision will further 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 declarative commitment of the authorities to fulfill the 14 priorities that the European Union has set for the BiH authorities,” TI BiH said.
The organization reminds that the Draft Law on the Protection of Corruption Whistleblowers in the FBiH was already adopted by the House of Representatives in June 2018 and has been in the process since then, although its urgent adoption is necessary because the Federation of BiH is the only level of government that has not yet legally protected “whistleblowers”, i.e. persons who report corruption in the workplace.
This law was submitted again in the form of a proposal by the FBiH Government in August 2022, but now with the new convocation of the Government, it would be withdrawn after so long.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.
They also noted that such a law exists at the state level, in Republika Srpska and Brčko District, and that the citizens of FBiH have been discriminated against for years due to numerous political obstructions.
“It is particularly inadmissible to withdraw from the procedure of the Proposal of the Law on the prevention of conflicts of interest in authorities in the FBiH, because it has been 10 years since there has been no competent authority in this entity to which cases of conflicts of interest can be reported.
According to the current law, this authority rests with the CEC of BiH, to which due to the amendments to the law at the state level in 2013, those competences were denied, and for ten years the occurrence of conflicts of interest in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has gone unpunished”, they state.
According to TI BIH data, currently 241 officials in FBiH perform more than one function in public companies 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 and other institutions completely ignore this law when appointing and allocating public funds to organizations led by officials in 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 FBiH, which was submitted to the procedure by the FBIH Government in the form of a proposal 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.
