Skopje, 4 August 2023 (MIA) – Supervising the implementation of laws is not systemically organized, and this in practice leads to ineffective implementation of laws. It is necessary to revise the organization and functioning of the inspection services, as well as other types of control and supervision, in order to guarantee the consistent implementation of the laws, the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption said on Friday.

Inspection supervision is the most important mechanism for controlling the implementation of laws, but in some laws, in addition to inspection supervision, other types of supervision, controls and audits are foreseen which are not clearly and precisely defined, Anti-Corruption Commission said at its 90th session held online via Zoom.

Accordingly, the Anti-Corruption Commission adopted a decision to amend and supplement the National Strategy for the Prevention of Corruption and Conflict of Interest 2021-2025. One of the new sectors (areas) proposed in the strategy is precisely “Supervision of the implementation of laws.”

“Moreover, it is crucial to strengthen the personnel and technical capacities of the inspection service, because at the moment, even in those areas where there are two different inspection services, at the central and local level, however, in practice there is no essential and systematic inspection supervision because none of these services had sufficient capacity,” member of the Anti-Corruption Commission and coordinator for drafting the Strategy, Vladimir Georgiev, said.

According to him, three priority problems that generate risks of corruption in this area have been determined in the "Supervision of Law Enforcement" sector, for the overcoming of which three measures and 10 activities are foreseen.

Anti-Corruption Commission proposes the second new area to be included separately in the National Strategy is “state-owned property.”

“In order to prevent corruption, which is particularly uttered in the management and disposal of state-owned property, it is very important to establish a transparent system of use, management and disposal of state-owned property, and for this goal, a registry of this property must be urgently created, which will be publicly available and which will allow any change in the state-owned property to be publicly monitored,” Georgiev said.

Part of the existing activities would be modified in the Strategy, but a total of 102 new activities would be added, which include the 18 activities from the two new areas - "Supervision of the implementation of laws" and "State-owned property,” Georgiev said.

In 2022, out of a total of 165 planned activities, which included the unrealized ones from 2021, only 17 or 10 percent were implemented, 55 percent were unrealized, while 35 percent were in the process of implementation.

The State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption adopted the National Strategy for the Prevention of Corruption and Conflict of Interest 2021-2025 on December 10, 2020 and Parliament adopted it on April 18, 2021, Geogiev added.

The State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption prepares annual reports on the implementation of the Strategy and submits them to the Parliament every year by March 31.

Photo: print screen