The public procurement process is more non-transparent than transparent, the servants continue to break the law on access to information, while the people do not know how the public money is spent. This is the general conclusion of the report on the transparency of public acquisitions prepared by Acces-Info Center on the basis of the monitoring carried out during March-August 2009. The report was presented in a news conference held at Info-Prim Neo on November 30. “The situation is identical with that of 2007 and 2008 and the previous years. We can say that the report is a radiography of the former government as regards the public acquisitions, but also a warning to the present government, which must enforce the law,” said Vasile Spinei, the president of Acces-Info Center. The monitoring covered 297 public institutions, including the central institutions and authorities, municipal and district councils, mayors' offices and district heads' offices, scientific research institutions, universities and medical institutions. Eight applications to be allowed access to information and 20 particular requests were submitted to each of them. According to the report, 22.6% answers, 10.3% refusals in written form and 67.1% tacit responses were given to the applications for information. Most of the refusals came from the scientific research institutions. To the report authors' surprise, many district councils hid information despite training seminars on access to information held there. Vasile Spinei explains the unsatisfactory results by the fact that many public servants are conservative and that the legislation is imperfect as it restricts the access to information about the procedural stages, signing and termination of contracts as if protecting the commercial secret and ensuring loyal competition. The report authors also said that most of the times the institutions refused to provide information because “the responsible person was absent”, “the documents were in the archive”, “the volume of information asked for was too large”. According to Vasile Spinei, the most ingenious answer was given by the Parliament's Apparatus –“the files and computers have burned” (during the April protests – e.n.). Asked if they will sue the institutions that refused to provide information, Vasile Spinei said there are over 400 cases of the kind. “The litigation plays an educative role. The servants who do not observe the law must be held accountable,” he said. The main recommendations for remedying the situation formulated in the report include the necessity of ensuring transparency in the public procurement process, making the officials react constructively to criticism and updating the Public Procurement Bulletin and public institution's websites. The Parliament and the Government were asked to make the control more efficient.