Preliminary results of the research on the civil society and citizen involvement in decision and policy-making process, conducted by Praxis within the project “Contributing to Public Administration Reform (PAR) in Kraljevo“ (part of the grant scheme implemented by WeBER project funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands) reveal that public participation in the process adopting legal acts in Kraljevo is almost non-existant.
In the period between 1 June 2016 and 1 August 2017, the Assembly of the City of Kraljevo adopted 399 legal acts. Except for planning documents whose adoption requires public insight in accordance with the Law on Planning and Construction, neither one of 399 legal acts was adopted following an organised public discussion, nor were citizens or civil society organisations involved in any other way in the drafting process.
The situation is different only in terms of strategic documents, which was demonstrated in the process of drafting and adopting the Local Action Plan for the Roma Community in the City of Kraljevo for the period 2017-2020. This document was adopted in September 2017, following the consultations with interested citizens and CSOs, as well as the public discussion. Involving CSOs early in the drafting phase allows them to substantially influence the content of the future legal acts. During the public discussion all the proposals submitted were adopted, and thereafter, the additional possibility of sending further comments in writing was provided.
Although the procedure for adopting this particular legal act may serve as an example of good practice and the right way of conducting genuine consultations, this example is an exception, limited to the procedures for adopting strategic legal acts. Most decisions are adopted without any public participation.
*This news was first published on Praxis' website.