Central authorities enact a reduced local autonomy. Commentary by Info-Prim Neo

The package of local autonomy laws, passed in late 2006, will not succeed in making the situation of Moldova’s local authorities any easier. And this is despite the fact that the amended Local Public Administration Law incorporates undeniable upgrades in comparison with its previous versions, and the Administrative Decentralisation Law meets the European decentralisation trends. Experts explain this “paradox” by saying that the recently finalised lawmaking effort is rather the result of some external pressure (specifically conditioned by CoE Recommendation No. 179 of October 9, 2005) than a genuine desire and internal political will to reform the local public administration. The same experts say that, lacking (or rejecting) any clear and in-depth concept of local authorities’ reform whatsoever, the Parliament chose to “polish” the legislation in a half measure style. [Authorities simulate co-operation with the Civil Society] The so widely publicised co-operation and partnership with the civil society was a merely formal framework in the process of debating the abovementioned laws. In reality, says municipal councillor Mihai Roscovan, and also director of Business Consulting Institute, no one of the Parliament members paid heed to local communities and civil society. For instance, the Coalition for Fiscal Decentralisation, composed of more than 40 NGOs, local authorities, and academic institutions, has forwarded to the Parliament 38 proposals to improve the Local Public Administration (LPA) Law and 22 for the Administrative Decentralisation Law. The final version of the PLA Law partially contained only three of these. The Parliament was also unreceptive to CoE experts’ proposals made in the report on these bills and sent for consideration in early December, 2006. The situation is increasingly worsening because of the Parliament’s unwillingness to amend the Law on Public Finances. The superficial amendments brought to this law set the whole lawmaking effort in reforming the field back. After all, financial autonomy is one of the key elements which secures a true self-government. Mihai Roscovan says that the Parliament didn’t wish to “yield” in other crucial matters as well, concerning relations between central and local governments, transfer of public property to local authorities, securing financial autonomy, and covering local competences with the necessary resources, etc. [Communities deprived of the right to protect their interests] For example, in order to avoid Government’s interference in local public matters, it was proposed that the local authorities of I and II level would have the right to inform the Constitutional Court whenever they considered a law ran in conflict with local autonomy rights, guaranteed by the Constitution and CoE’s European Charter of Local Self-Government. Nonetheless, according to the new laws, none of the local authorities representatives - local council, councillor or mayor - has the right to directly submit claims not even to the first court of contentious-administrative matters. In case someone of the local actors requests a particular decision, whether to annul a decision or suspend it, they can make it only through the agency of an administrative control office, meaning a Government structure. As it has happened before, a body subordinated to the Government would never run against it, even if the Government would marginalise local autonomy rights granted by law. The examples of “Antena C” and “Euro TV” municipal stations, with their privatisation underway, are more than relevant: despite the fact that the Administrative Control Division within the Ministry of Local Public Administration was informed by 3 municipal councillors two weeks about the illegality of the CMC decisions of November 30 and December 14, 2006, no one has done anything to initiate proceedings. [Simulation in style and essence] At the end of last year, media NGOs officially addressed the public opinion, embassies and foreign missions, with respect to the fact that “the so-called Parliament’s co-operation with the civil society, concerning mass media, have a rather formal nature, aimed at improving the authorities’ image internationally, and at simulating a social consensus as regards the most important problems of the country.” Several media NGOs boycotted the works of the annual Conference “Co-operation between the Parliament and the Civil Society”, unfolded under the auspices of Speaker Marian Lupu, “in protest at the abuses committed by the authorities in the process of implementing the new Broadcasting Code in the cases of Antena C and Euro TV Chisinau, and as a sign of disapproval over the faked co-operation with the civil society.”