Lots of work for Serbia – We still await assessment from the European Commission to start negotiations on public procurements

(Photo: seio.gov.rs)

- However, next year, the European Union will change regulations in this field and all regulations will be completely different. Therefore, we are in a bit more difficult situation than we thought before the beginning of the conversation last week and this means we will have to adapt – the collocutor of our portal explained.

Predrag Jovanovic, director of the Directorate for public procurements which is the leading institution in the Negotiation group for the negotiations with EU, for Chapter 5- public procurements, also agrees that serious steps have already been taken when it comes to compliance of Serbian legislation with EU in the public procurements field. Apart from the representatives of the Directorate for public procurements, the group comprises representatives of other governmental institutions – the Republic Commission for the protection of rights in public procurements, Governmental auditing institution, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Policy, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Energy, development and environmental protection, the Ministry of internal and foreign trade and telecommunications, etc.

At the firsts meeting of the group held January 24, 2014, it was agreed how explanatory and bilateral screening for March 21 and May 13 this year will be prepared.

- The second important question was distribution of topics per institutions in line with their responsibilities. For every subgroup, such as: classical sector, concessions and public-private partnership and international aspect, responsible institutions which will choose their representatives in subgroups were delegated – Jovanovic says and ads that the most important information during the negotiations within the Chapter 5 – public procurements can be found at the Internet page of the Public Procurements Directorate: Negotiations with the EU – Chapter 5.

(Tanja Miscevic)

At the explanatory screening held March 21, EU experts presented directives, decisions of the European Court of Justice and other documents which are relevant for the harmonization process. According to our collocutor, it was at the same time an opportunity for Serbian representatives to ask questions in case they had dilemmas or they needed additional explanations.

At the bilateral screening which will be held May 13, representatives of the Negotiation group 5 should present to the EU Commission representatives how they will carry out the compliance with EU directives and practice in every sub field. It is important to show not only readiness to carry out compliance but also to have a clear and realistic action plan which will lead to it.

- Based on bilateral screening, EC experts will generate a report with the assessment of whether the country is or is not ready to enter the negotiations for the Chapter 5 immediately. In the second case, they would provide benchmarks in the report which the country must previously fulfill in order to start negotiations. In other words, until the benchmarks are not completed, negotiations would not start, i.e. “there would be no opening” of the Chapter 5 –Jovanovic points out.

For instance, Croatia got two “parameters” for which it needed two years to implement while negotiations for Chapter 5 which started after that lasted for only a year and a half.

- Therefore it is important to prepare ourselves as good as possible at the level of the entire executive authority for the implementation of the necessary reforms in order to get the date for the beginning of negotiations for Chapter 5 without prerequisites and thus significantly speed up the reforms of public procurements in Serbia – the director of the Directorate for public procurements thinks.

Changes to the Law on Public Procurements underway

The action plan of the Public Procurements Directorate for 2014 comprises the beginning of development of the analysis of legislation compliance in public procurements field with EU legislation which is an important step in improving regulatory framework of public procurements in Serbia.

(Predrag Jovanovic)

The analysis which EU experts, hired through PLAC project, will carry out should end by the end of this year. Based on the results as well as on the analysis of the effects of the new Law on public procurements, proposals for amendments to the law will be defined.

According to EU experts’ assessment, the Law on public procurements of Serbia is to a large extent compliant with directives and represents a significant step forward compared to the previous law, a collocutor of eKapija claims. Experts “specifically pointed out anti-corruption measures which take one whole law chapter".

- Apart from that, they pointed out that the Directorate for public procurements prepared models for public procurement procedures implementation such as: procurement plan model, internal act model, tender documentation model for open, restrictive qualification and negotiation procedure, framework agreement model, low valued procurements process model, which was of great use for procuring entity for proper implementation of the new law – Jovanovic points out.

- Also, a majority of bylaws have been adopted so that the assessment says that “in a relatively short period of time (in less than a year), it was done more than ex transitory countries did in a few years”, i.e. “that significant progress has been made in a year when it comes to implementation of the Law”.

According to the collocutor of our portal, taking into account the fact that the implementation of the law will be the focus of the monitoring and evaluation of the EU, it can be concluded that the first significant step in that direction has been taken but that there is a plenty of other things left to be done, having in mind that the implementation is observed at all levels of authority, i.e. the overall system. All of that takes a lot of time and activities which will be comprised in the Strategy of public procurements and the Action plan for implementation as well as within the Plan for anti-corruption in public procurements.

- It is necessary that the Government should also involve in the process of coordination and monitoring of the activities within the negotiation process in the public procurement field in order to ensure that all relevant ministries, authorities and the Government carry out delegated commitments and agreements in the public procurements field–Predrag Jovanovic points out.

Significant neighbors’ experience

According to Jovanovic, experiences from Croatia and Slovenia can help us a lot because these three countries mostly have similar laws.

- Slovenia became an EU member in 2004 and has valuable experience in the implementation of directives and for us new instruments such as centralized procurements, e-procurements and others. We can learn a lot from their experience when it comes to practical implementation. Apart from that, their experience in supervision and control of legislation implementation, especially when it comes to efficient sanctions of misuse in public procurements is relevant - a director of the Directorate for public procurements concludes.

Irina Milosevic