Southeast Europe

The Parliamentary Centre in Serbia

The Parliamentary Centre, in cooperation with ProConcept, a local NGO in Serbia, received a grant award by UNDEF to implement a new Project in Serbia: Parliament in Transition – Strengthening Accountabilityin Serbia. The Project, expected to begin in early 2007, will work with the National Assembly (NA) of Serbia to strengthen its capacity to oversee government spending and policy implementation and develop related internal policies and procedures for oversight. The Project focuses on engaging Members of Parliament (MPs), parliamentary staff, and civil society organizations (CSOs) on holding public consultations on important government policies and initiatives, particularly as they relate to anti-corruption, and seeks to address the role of the NA in Serbia’s National Anti-Corruption Strategy. Pre-budget consultations are a priority for the Project, as well as the institutionalization of policy dialogues and public hearings for monitoring of passed legislation.

The objective/purpose of this Project is threefold: (i) to strengthen accountability, transparency and participation in the parliamentary governance of Serbia; (ii) to strengthen the representative and oversight roles of elected officials and promote a more active role for the legislature in Serbia's transition; and (iii) to increase citizen participation and strengthen the role and participation of CSOs in decision making and as key partners to development and reform.

The Project addresses the National Assembly’s inconsistent role in overseeing expenditures and policy implementation by the Executive, as well as lack of policy continuity between parliamentary mandates. It also addresses the negative public perception of the parliament by strengthening its representative role. Finally, the project seeks to give a more constructive voice to civil society, by increasing its capacities to provide a more proactive contribution in monitoring implementation of policies and budgetary spending.

For more information on this project, please contact Sonja Vojnovic.

Previous Parliamentary Centre Programs in Eastern Europe

Serbia

Between 2003 and 2005, the Parliamentary Centre implemented the Southeast Europe Parliamentary Program (SEPP) with the National Assembly of Serbia. The Program, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), was designed to strengthen the institutional capacity of legislatures in Southeast Europe so that the legislative branch had an increased value-added role contributing to good governance in the region. Specifically, the program aimed to increase the capacity of parliamentary staff to provide effective non-partisan, professional, research, and administrative services; to strengthen the financial resource management capacity of parliaments; and to increase the oversight role of parliaments by strengthening their capacity to monitor government expenditures.

The human resources component of SEPP-Serbia addressed the permanent staff of the National Assembly (NA) of Serbia as support staff to the parliamentary leadership, the parliamentarians, committees, and the institution itself. The capacity to assist Members could only be increased by strengthening the human resources capacity as well as solidifying other organizational and material aspects that parliamentarians rely on for help. By focussing activities on better management structures and planning, SEPP had been able to reach both staff and, indirectly, elected Members in its programming. While staff were able to develop their own potential and work in an organization with improving work performance, parliamentarians could, in turn, begin to count on more effective assistance so that they may concentrate on the essential tasks entrusted in them. Overall programming aimed to enhance the NA Secretariat’ s overall capacity to provide effective, non-partisan, professional and administrative services in order to strengthen the institutional capacity of the legislative branch of government, thereby allowing for greater responsiveness and accountability in Serbia and creating an enabling environment for social, economic, and political development.

Through SEPP, the Parliamentary Centre also supported the National Assembly of Serbia to draft a law on the State Audit Institution (SAI). Through the program, an experienced researcher and legislative drafter was assigned to the parliamentary Sub-Committee tasked with drafting the law. The draft law was completed in Spring 2005 and reviewed by various international experts, including several prominent Canadians, for its viability, adherence to international norms, and non-partisan structure. On November 14, 2005, the law was passed with 129 of the 188 present MPs voting in favour for the law.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

In order to strengthen research capacity within the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the Parliamentary Centre established a research unit within the BiH State Parliament in Fall 2004. Intended to provide analytical support to key committees of both the House of Peoples and House of Representatives, the Research Centre was created following detailed assessment and planning work, which found that parliamentary leaders recognized the lack of research capacity as a serious gap that needed to be filled. As a result, the Research Centre was established in order to provide greater empowerment and capacity to the BiH Parliamentary Assembly and its Committees to make more informed decisions when deliberating on issues of importance to its citizens.

The Research Centre was established through the Parliamentary Centre’s Southeast Europe Parliamentary Program (SEPP), funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Over the course of the program, SEPP raised awareness and recognition of the importance of professional research capacity in the policy and legislative-making roles of parliamentary committees. Primarily serving the Budget/Finance and Legal/Constitutional Committees of both the House of Peoples and House of Representatives, the Research Centre provided the BiH Parliamentary Assembly with expert, non-partisan, and high quality research analyses, which helped it to become a relevant structure within the PA institution.

The Research Centre also provided support to parliamentary committees in holdingpublic hearings. Through a pilot project, the Legal/Constitutional Committees of both the House of Peoples and House of Representatives held committee hearings in December 2005 on the topic of post-secondary education across 8 cities in BiH. These types of public consultations, as conducted in Canadian parliamentary settings, were new to BiH, and the initiative was considered an important step not only in the promotion of public outreach in BiH, but also as a further step in building the research capacity of the Parliamentary Assembly and establishing and promoting the Research Centre with Members. The pilot hearings were deemed a success, which resulted in greater demand by parliamentarians on promoting outreach in BiH and strengthening the role of the Parliamentary Assembly to serve citizens of BiH.

Following the conclusion of SEPP, funding for the Research Centre was taken over in January 2006 by USAID through a larger parliamentary support program with the BiH PA, executed by the OSCE.