Centre for Civic Education (CCE) has sent an initiative to the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC) to establish responsibility and initiate proceedings against 27 MPs that did not submit income and property reports after taking office.
The Initiative states that a huge number of MPs of the new assembly of the Parliament of Montenegro violated Article 23 of the Law on Prevention of Corruption, which obliges public officials to submit income and property reports 30 days after the end of their term of office, as well as 30 days from the day of taking function.
CCE considers that all MPs of the new assembly were obliged to submit reports once taking the function, ie. taking of a new parliamentary mandate. There is no word about the continuous performance of a public function of those who were MPs in the previous assembly, as indicated in =Article 14 of the Law on Election of Councilors and MPs, which indicates that on the day of confirmation of the mandate of a member of the Parliament, the mandate of the member of the Parliament of the previous assembly ends.
Hence, there is no continuity in the performance of the function of MP in the previous and current assembly of the Parliament and all MPs of the 27. assembly of the Parliament of Montenegro had to submit property records within 30 days from the date of the constitutive session, which was held on 23 September 2020, or 30 days upon taking function if they later entered from the list of MPs to one of the vacancies position.
CCE also expresses concern that this issue was not in the domain of regular controls of the APC, and therefore APC was urged to take this Initiative as the priority.
CCE has also previously pointed to the fact that a large number of MPs, both within the new parliamentary majority and the opposition, did not submit reports to the APC within the statutory deadline, but this was not followed by an adequate response from the APC.
Vasilije Radulović , Programme associate