Though the Law on Transparency in Decision-Making has been in force for seven years, the central and local public authorities of Moldova do not fully implement its provisions. Such a conclusion is contained in a study carried out by the Association of Independent Press, the Romanian Academic Society and the Advocacy Academy of Timisoara. Its results were presented in Chisinau on March 29, IPN reports.
The study authors said the websites of most of the public institutions include special divisions entitled “Decisional transparency”, but in many cases these lack relevant information about the process of ensuring transparency in the decision-making process. Some of the institutions do not have functional websites. Most of the email addresses indicated on the websites of mayor’s offices are also nonfunctional.
The public authorities’ legal obligation to publish the annual report on transparency in the decision-making process by the end of the first quarter of the year coming after the reporting year is neglected. For 2013, only 12% of the monitored public institutions published such reports on their websites, while for 2014 – only 16%. No mayor’s office provided data about their decision-making process on the website or at request.
Most of the documents of the public authorities are adopted without being debated publicly. Thus, only 9% of the draft documents adopted by ministries were discussed in public in 2013 and 14% in 2014. The district councils debated publicly 24% of the documents adopted in 2013 and 33% of those adopted in 2014. Only the Ministry of Economy debated in public over half of the proposals adopted during the two years.
The people and NGOs are insufficiently familiarized with the rights guaranteed by the law and do not use them frequently and fully, while transparency in the process of examining proposals submitted by people and NGOs is at a very low level.
The study authors recommend to adopt a common methodology for implementing the Law on Transparency in Decision-Making, in accordance with the minimum European standards on public consultation and the commitments assumed by Moldova through the Association Agreement with the EU, to oblige all the central and local public authorities to ensure the functionality of their websites, to provide public information in a clear and concise way and to make it accessible on the website in a visible place.
