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| Synthesis latest cases on transparency 2009 | |
| Annex 1 (RO) | |
| Annex 2 (RO) | |
| Annex 3 (RO) | |
| Annex 4 (RO) |
Synthesis of the latest cases of transparency's (mal)practices encountered by IPP in the first part of 2009
Bucharest, April 14, 2009 ■ The Institute for Public Policy (IPP) releases updated information to the public on how certain Romanian institutions / central and local public authorities do their utmost to obstruct free access to information of public interest, through practices ranging from simply ignoring the requests for information from the civil society to disregarding final Court decisions obliging them to release the requested information. We would like to bring to the public attention the risk of diminishing the public interest in such negative practices in Romania, because certain public institutions that already make no effort to treat citizens respectfully might turn the obstruction of access to information into a habit. More and more clearly, a category of politicians who defy the requests for information of public interest takes shape in Romania. They are not interested that they are brought to Court and, eventually, don’t even comply with the Court decision obliging them to communicate the public interest information. The conviction that they are electorally invincible makes the leaders of some public institutions treat with arrogance any structure of the civil society taking interest in the public activity. In this way, they send a negative message to civil servants, whose purpose has become to satisfy the vanity of the leaders rather than reply to the requests for information of public interest.
Since the beginning of this year, IPP has submitted over 500 requests for information to a large number of central and local institutions / public authorities (Parliament, Ministries, National Authority for Persons with Handicap, Managing Authorities, Municipalities, Prefectures, County Councils, General Directorates for Social Assistance and Child Protection, Public Finance County Directorates, Public Health Directorates, etc.) and initiated a series of actions towards having more access to the decision-making process (e.g.: presence at the meetings of the Standing Committees in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, at Local Councils meetings, etc.).
Below, we present the main conclusions resulted after the monitoring of the degree of transparency of these institutions:
Central administration
Chamber of Deputies
In December 2008, the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) submitted a letter to the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Ms Roberta Anastase, requiring the monthly publication of all information, detailed and broken down for each deputy, on the website of the Chamber, regarding the daily allowances, accommodation, transportation, mobile phones, fixed benefits, etc. of deputies, so that all citizens can have this information in real time. More than 4 months after the submission of the letter, despite the formal declarations of complete openness and collaboration with the civil society and after the Court obliged the Chamber to release to IPP information related to the expenditure incurred by deputies in the previous mandate, the current leaders of the Chamber of Deputies haven't taken any measure in this respect. The invitations sent by the Speaker of the Chamber to the civil society to attend round tables and seminars haven’t been accompanied by the concrete measures required for the Parliament to become really transparent.
Moreover, much of the information about the nominal votes of MPs, which was permanently updated on the webpage of the Chamber in the former legislature, doesn’t seem to be that rigorously updated anymore, although more than half of the deputies are newly elected in an election system of uninominal constituencies, and citizens are entitled to know their voting options on all laws that have been passed in the Parliament.
Annex 1 provides a compelling example of a vote from 10 February 2009, where, although the result specifies that 104 deputies were in favour, 26 were against , 4 abstained and 1 didn't vote at all, only 3 names appear in the uninominal voting list! (the vote can be found at http://www.cdep.ro/pls/steno/ evot.nominal?idv=4842&idl=1).
We believe that such a regress in the transparency of Parliament, which is especially due to a poor management of plenary meetings, where electronic voting has become rather an exception and not the rule, must be corrected soon and institutionalised in the Chamber of Deputies. The procedure of nominal voting is necessary to exist independent from political calculations (of hiding the lack of the required quorum, avoiding naming those who are absent).
Among the positive aspects, we take notice of the archived video recordings of the Budget, Public Administration and Legal Committees meetings, and those of the Joint Special Committee for the debate of the 4 Codes, and of the possibility for civil society representatives to attend the meetings of these Committees. However, we would have expected the practice of video recording the meetings to be extended to all Standing Committees, together with increasing the quality of recordings, which is quite poor for some Committees.
Romanian Senate
The Senate persists in its lack of transparency, and even despiteful attitude towards the efforts made by the civil society in this respect.
The most serious change observed by IPP is that the nominal votes of the senators completely disappeared from the webpage of the Senate in the context of the new leading structures of this institution. Such a decision of hiding the voting options of each senator on the debated projects represents a serious setback with regard to transparency, which we hope not to be a deliberate decision of the new leaders.
We hereby call the attention of both the leaders of the institution and the parliamentary groups leaders from the Senate to go back by way of good practice to the procedure of nominal voting, supporting the real time publication of this information on the website of the institution. In this way, they will demonstrate that accountability towards the electors, advocated in the electoral campaign, should be at the core of the political reform process especially during the mandate.
Things are far from being better when it comes to updating other types of information on the website of the institution. More than 4 months after the election of the new Parliament, the individual files of MPs are still "under construction". This is proven even by the page on the activity of the Speaker of the Senate, Mr Mircea Geoană. While trying to get access to information on the legislative activities of senators, the page generates an error (see Annex 2). On the same page, in the section called “MPs speeches”, we can find a list, which, beside the fact that it doesn’t say what it refers to, in many cases only includes the first name of the MPs (“Adriana”, “Andrei”, “Ionuţ”, “Toni”, “Lia”). This proves a lack of professionalism with regard to the communication of some minimum information on the activity of senators. The CVs of senators are not completely available, another minimum sign of respect expected by citizens in order to better evaluate the competences of MPs or even any possible conflicts of interests.
As it had already happened with the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate was obliged through a Court decision to provide to IPP all the information related to the expenditure incurred on accommodation, transportation, parliamentary office supplies in the former mandate. However, there has been no reaction from this institution, because this information still cannot be found on the recently launched internet page.
Position of the central administration - case of the Ministry of Health
On the background of the increasing interest of the Institute in the area of monitoring the effectiveness of public money spending in the field of mental health, more specifically, of the funds allocated for the palliative care services in Romania, we required some information of public interest to the Ministry of Health, in its quality of central responsible authority in this field. Due to the poor quality of the information provided and the total lack of reaction from the Ministry in one of the cases, IPP brought this institution to Court.
In the first case - when we required information about the state of psychiatric hospitals in Romania, the number of patients from these hospitals and the costs associated to the care given to patients, we didn’t receive any answer. With regard to the request for information about palliative care services, the answer of the Ministry of Health proves that there are serious gaps at the level of this institution regarding the perception / enforcement of the law on the access to information of public interest. In order to obtain the requested information, we were redirected towards the Public Health Directorates, which are decentralised bodies of the Ministry, and towards a certain National Centre for the Organisation and Maintenance of the Information System in the Health Sector, which is a subordinated structure of the Ministry. This shows that the current structure in charge with receiving requests for information of public interest and redirecting them to the specialised structures didn’t make any effort to communicate this information directly to the beneficiary. They prefer to leave the beneficiaries identify the information themselves in a state structure where such proceedings can last forever (see Annex 3).
Requests submitted to the Government on current social issues
IPP has recently submitted requests for concrete information to all the ministers of Emil Boc’s Cabinet about the meetings they had with representatives of the business environment, of Romanian and foreign companies, the length and purpose of those meetings, etc., for the purpose of monitoring transparency and the consultation practices between these two segments of society. From the signals that we have received so far, we can anticipate that, this time too, we will have to go for a legal solution in order to defend our right to information.
Local administration
Profit from the fee on transparency: Municipality of Bucharest, Municipality of Baia Mare, Municipality of Sfântu Gheorghe, Municipality of Iaşi, Municipality of Drobeta Turnu Severin
In 2007, a final decision of Bucharest Tribunal abolished an illegal practice of that time of Bucharest Municipality, which charged IPP 475 lei for the reply to a request for information of public interest. At that moment, Bucharest Municipality pretended that this was a fee on issuing “duplicates”. In reality, the documents provided were mere photocopies, but the photocopying fee of the Municipality exceeded by almost 20 times the normal market price. The intention suspected by IPP was that of discouraging the civil society from requesting information of public interest from this authority.
At the beginning of this year, the Bucharest Municipality “hit back”. Like in 2007, ignoring the Court decision in favour of IPP, the Municipality Council required the Institute for Public Policy (by phone) to pay 1 leu/page as a photocopying fee for the release of the required documents. IPP brought the Bucharest Municipality to Court again, considering this practice as being abusive: surprisingly, although the Court had declared the fee on “duplicates” illegal, the legal experts of the Municipality serenely filed a new General Council Decision (dated 2006!), which restored the fee. The Court proceedings are still pending in this case.
A similar case, which ended with a decision in favour of IPP , was against the Municipality of Baia - Mare, which also charged a photocopying fee of 1 leu/page at the beginning of this year. We will keep monitoring the conduct of the Municipality.
These actions will not stop here: according to the most recent documentation actions of the Institute, there are municipalities which practice much higher prices than those from Bucharest and Baia - Mare. The ranking is as follows:
- Municipality of Sfântu - Gheorghe, which charged a photocopying fee of 5 lei/page in 2008 (in 2007 the fee was 1 leu/page);
- Municipality of Iaşi, where the photocopying fee charged in 2008 was 3 lei/page;
- Municipality of Drobeta Turnu Severin - 2 lei/page in 2008;
- Municipality of Bacău - 2 lei/page in 2008 (after a fee of 6 lei/page in 2007).
We consider these fees to be prohibitive for regular citizens who might need some information / copies of documents from those institutions. Therefore, we will make every effort for these practices to be reduced / abolished at the Romanian local administration level.
Constanţa Municipality - the decision to communicate information of public interest, a responsibility that civil servants don’t have the courage to take
The case of Constanţa Municipality is endemic, in the sense that this institution has been obstinately refusing for years to reply to the requests for information of public interest submitted by IPP. At the beginning of this year, with the help of some local NGOs, partners in a project on monitoring the public procurement process, the Institute organised a transparency exercise in order to test the municipalities of county capital cities to see the extent to which they treat the requests for information from various organisations with the same attention. In this context, the request of the Centre for Civic Resources from Constanţa kept being sent from one municipality department to another. Eventually, the Directorate for Public Procurement left the responsibility of the "opportunity" to submit the required information (a series of public procurement contracts) to the Centre for Citizen Information Constanţa, while drawing at the same time the attention that they might not be on the list of documents produced and / or managed by the Local Council of Constanţa Municipality and the Municipality of Constanţa. As expected, as a result of these “recommendations”, the Centre for Citizen Information didn’t have the courage to submit the required documents (see Annex 4). Currently, we are expecting the solution to the administrative complaint made to this institution by IPP under the same law on the free access to information of public interest.
Participation at the meetings of Bucharest sectors local councils - mission impossible in sector 2
Beside the requests for information of public interest, another mechanism through which the Institute operates in the sense of monitoring the transparency of public institutions is that of effective participation in the deliberative process, through the presence at Permanent Standing Committees meetings in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and local council meetings of Bucharest sectors. For many years, IPP has been providing consultancy / training to the structures of the civil society throughout Romania, encouraging them to monitor the meetings, public funds and the activity of the locally elected officials in general.
If access is granted at the meetings of the Standing Committees in Parliament, not the same thing can be said about the council meetings of Bucharest Municipality sectors. Recently, the access of the IPP representative at the local council meeting of Sector 5 was allowed only after some interrogation regarding the participation purpose. In the case of the local council of Sector 2, access into the institution was not allowed, the representative of the Institute being literally stopped by the community police at the entrance of the building where the ordinary council meeting was being held.
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We consider such practices as intolerable in an allegedly European country and we appreciate that it is our duty to inform the public about all these cases, hoping that those who are answerable will be held responsible by the competent authorities (e.g.: Prefects), and, as a final resort, by the Court.
The Institute will continue to defend the right to freedom of information, considering that this is the only way to fulfil its mission of contributing with real, objective information to increasing the quality of decision-making processes in Romania and that of informing the public correctly about all these processes.
This evaluation will be presented to the new management of the Agency for Governmental Strategies of the Romanian Government and to the Committees for the Investigation of Abuses from the two Chambers of Parliament in order to inform their members so that these practices which are against democratic mechanisms can be changed. At least as far as access to information of public interest is concerned, local autonomy unfortunately appears to be interpreted abusively, and the few active structures of the local civil society (still) don't have the courage to say it.
For further information, please contact Mr Adrian Moraru, IPP Deputy Director or Ms Elena Iorga, IPP Programme Director, tel.: 004021 212 3126, mobile 0040724 237 229 and 0040722 166 888 or email: adrian@ipp.ro and elena@ipp.ro .
