Building on the National Integrity System Assessments conducted throughout candidate and potential candidate EU countries, representatives of Transparency International’s National Chapters from Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Turkey came together to discuss the institutional architecture of fighting corruption. TI representatives were accompanied by public officials of anti-corruption agencies and state prosecutor’s offices of each country to share their countries experiences.
Lack of political will in the fight against corruption was a common theme and defined as a key impediment to improving the overall socio-economic wellbeing in the region. “In Kosovo, the lack of political will led to institutional overlaps and weakness in the judicial system in the fight against corruption,” said Visar Sutaj from the Kosova Democratic Institute ( KDI). “The reason why so many mechanisms have been created – starting from the Anti-Corruption Agency to the Council of the President – was to give the impression that the government is fighting corruption, while in practice nothing has been accomplished in that direction,” said Mr. Sutaj. A similar trend of establishing new initiatives and institutions followed in many post socialist countries in the Balkans, but they have not proven to be effective in practice.
“Fight against corruption requires close collaboration between al actors, and such deficiency has been one of the main findings of KDI. You’re here today, either because you are part of the institutions that fight corruption, or you’re important allies in these efforts whether being civil society organizations, media”, said Anja Osterhause from Transparency International Secretariat in Berlin.
“We encourage the judiciary to do its work; they are independent as they shall be. If they fail to do their work, there’s no need for judges to hold on to their job for 20 years”, said Dragan Slipac, deputy director of AAK from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As oppose to political corruption, the petty corruption has decreased in the past 2-3 years, judiciary is weakening and no, there’s no enough political will to fight it. Judges are not incompetent, but politically influenced. In Turkey, there’s no such AAK institutions, regardless a sole agency is not an ultimate cure for corruption especially if its politically captured, said Muhitin Acaar, public administration professor from Turkey.
The role of the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA), President’s Anti-Corruption Council and other numerous task forces established by the government and State Prosecutor came into question during the discussion. Artan Canhasi from KDI said, “The Agency’s law enforcement competence is not bringing the necessary results and these resources can be shifted to corruption prevention and public education competences”. “Kosovo can also do without the President’s Council, a unified police unit to fight corruption and economic crime and only the Special Prosecutor’s Office in terms of numerous task forces within the State Prosecutor” added Canhasi.
This activity has been financially supported by European Union.