Chairperson of the Committee on Political System, Judiciary and Administration Mr Rifat Rastoder and Deputy Chairperson of the Committee Ms Snežana Jonica today met with the co-rapporteurs of the Monitoring Committee of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe Ms Gaye Doganoglu and Mr Henrik Brade Johansen. They are staying in Montenegro within a monitoring visit, in order to evaluate the state of local democracy in Montenegro.

Representatives of the Council of Europe were interested in the relation between the Parliament and the local authorities, as well as whether there was enough instruments for transferring certain tasks from within the competencies of the state authority bodies to municipalities. Deputy Chairperson of the Committee Ms Snežana Jonica pointed out that Montenegro, using the European Charter of Local Self-Government as a guideline, had made significant steps forward in the laws relating to local self-government, providing significant room for decentralisation, which was one of the most significant provisions of the said Charter. However, the decentralisation process by the local self-governments, as said MP Jonica, had been stopped and had never gone further towards the citizens. She emphasised that one of the core problems in this area was bad financial situation and governance by the local self-governments, and in that sense she pointed out the need for amending the legislative framework in order to organise the local self-government and have it operate with high quality.

Chairperson of the Committee Mr Rifat Rastoder informed the co-rapporteurs from the Council of Europe on the state of local self-government in Montenegro, emphasising that the Parliament, through its legislative and control function, monitors the implementation of the regulations it adopted. In that respect, MP Rastoder pointed out that the Parliament was obligated to adopt legal regulations of high quality in order for the local self-government to have a good legal basis for implementation. In continuation of their conversation, the Chairperson of the Committee pointed out the disproportion, or the difference, between the municipalities in Montenegro, emphasising that it reflected the differences in the size of municipalities, number of inhabitants, the degree of development, etc. Additionally, he noted that local self-governments had a bit too much financial freedom, which represented an additional problem.  On the other hand, the Chairperson of the Committee pointed out that those competencies had not been used to meet the needs of the citizens, in order to improve the overall state of the local self-governments.

At the very end of the meeting, the Chairperson of the Committee expressed his view and opinion that Montenegro needed expert assistance in this part, and that the carrying out of a comprehensive analysis of the local self-government system was needed, in order to adapt our system and thusly regulate it in the same manner as in the European countries.

The meeting that co-rapporteurs of the Council of Europe held with representatives of the Committee on Political System, Judiciary and Administration today was a part of the monitoring visit to Montenegro, focusing on the main European standards in the field of local democracy, the European Charter of Local Self-Government which was ratified by Montenegro in 2008, and evaluation of the state of local democracy in Montenegro, in order to prepare the Report on the state of local democracies in the Council of Europe member states. In addition to co-rapporteurs, the meeting was also followed by an independent expert and representatives of the Secretariat in charge of monitoring.