Central authorities progress in ensuring transparency in decision-making

The central public authorities made progress in implementing the legislation that ensures transparency in decision-making. Such a conclusion was reached by the Association for Participative Democracy ADEPT after monitoring 24 central public authorities (ministries, agencies, etc.), Info-Prim Neo reports. ADEPT representative Cristina Cojocaru said the argumentation of the necessity of drafting decisions, placing announcements about the initiation of public consultations and publishing yearly reports about transparency in decision-making has improved. There are yet shortcomings. Many of the institutions do no indicate the placement date on the advertisement. “It seems unimportant, but the law says that recommendations can be presented 15 days after the publication of the announcement. If the date is not indicated, the person does not know when the term expires,” Cristina Cojocaru said. The date is not indicated in 32% of the 141 draft decisions monitored. In 43% of the cases, the indicated date does not correspond to the date when the announcements were published. The experts also established that in 75% of the cases, the draft decisions are available on central institutions' websites. In the other cases, the method in which a decision can be accessed is not specified. In 3% of the cases, there were announced public consultations in the form of debates. But the situation has improved compared with the first half of the year. The synthesis of recommendations is seldom published on websites. In the period, it appeared only on the websites of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Transport and Road Infrastructure. Cristina Cojocaru said there is no ministry or agency that would fully observe the law on transparency in decision-making. Some of the central authorities respect certain aspects, but neglect others. The law on transparency in decision-making was adopted in 2008, while the regulations concerning the procedures for ensuring transparency in decision-making – in 2010. The second monitoring report covered the period between July and September 2010.