Government is more transparent in relations with civil society, Sergiu Ostaf

Three fourths of all the decisions and bills included in the Cabinet’s agenda are available to civil society for discussion and comment. Compared with the previous years, the quality of the relations between the Government and civil society improved, considers the chairman of the National Participation Council Sergiu Ostaf, Info-Prim Neo reports. However, there are a number of shortcomings that must be removed. Another about 25% of the issues in the Government’s agenda for 2012 do not fully meet the Law on Transparency in Decision Making. “16% of the important matters are announced for discussion 2-3 hours before the Cabinet’s meetings, while 7% of the issues are announced during the meetings. It’s impossible to state a documented opinion within such a short period,” Sergiu Ostaf said in a workshop on the strengthening of dialogue between Government and civil society. Civil society formulated a series of recommendations for the Government. The executive must make effort to maximally minimize the so-called additional agenda subjects. The extracts from reports and decisions should be public documents as the finality of the whole process is now not seen. Another recommendation concerns the procedure for approving legislative initiatives over important draft laws. Under the law, the approval process is not transparent and this undermines the provisions of the Law on Transparency in Decision Making. The recommendation to Government is to abandon this procedure or to ensure transparency. One more recommendation is to optimize the Cabinet’s meetings as 80% of the subjects are technical in nature and refer to the transfer of a plot or the negotiation of powers. According to civil society, a secretariat is needed to deal with these issues or there should be instituted a preliminary procedure that would enable to vote such subjects as a package, if there are no objections.