15 reasons why the Law on the Anti-Corruption Agency should not be adopted:

1. The Decision of the Government of Serbia to establish the Anti-Corruption Council, as an advisory body with wide- ranging jurisdiction, proved to be correct, because corruption represents a constantly changing phenomenon which is hard to define.
2. The Republic of Serbia already has an anticorruption body which, in practice, proved to be a good solution, and this body should be reinforced normatively, and provided with competent services, qualified staff, as well as staff training, in order to enable the successful performance of its functions undisturbed by any unjustified influences, instead of establishing a new body, which, because of the fashion it had been conceived, can not give results anticipated in combating corruption.
3. The Anti-Corruption Council is the only anticorruption body which, with its flexible scope of activities, completely, independently and directly applies the UN Convention against Corruption by advising on the cases of corruption, and the need to curb corruption, and therefore ‘’promote the participation of society and reflect the principles of the rule of law, proper management of public affairs and public property, integrity, transparency and accountability.’’ (Article 5, point 1 of the UN Convention against Corruption).
4. The experiences with the Government’s anticorruption programs up to this point, as well as its adoption and amendments to the anticorruption regulations and changes of the law and provisions related to the corruption, show that the anticorruption initiative comes to an end, or changes with the change of the government which launched it, which leads to discontinuation in the activities and the measures applied so far. The Anti-Corruption Council is the only anticorruption initiative still working since 2001, despite of the problems which it encountered in the cooperation with all three cabinets, and as a result of its independency and consistency in the fight against corruption. Consequently, the Anti-Corruption Council has earned its reputation both in the country and abroad.
5. Because of its consistency, The Anti-Corruption Council has become a trustworthy institution, according to the recent opinion poll conducted by the Transparency Serbia. When asked: ‘’who would you turn to for help, when faced with corruption?’’, by far the largest percent of citizens chose The Anti-Corruption Council out of the institutions given in the poll.
6. The Article 5, point 2 of the UN Convention against Corruption envisages that    ‘’ Each State shall endeavor to establish and promote effective practices aimed at the prevention of corruption’’, which means that the state is required to provide the continuity of work of the institutions which were successful in the fight against corruption.
7. In the standard procedure of other countries, the established anticorruption bodies whose model was, more or less, implemented into our draft law, proved to be the solution without sound results.  Those laws were enacted merely to satisfy a formal and pretenced fulfillment of the international obligations.
8. The establishment of the new anticorruption bodies requires inadequate spending of the budgetary funds and watering down of the accountability of the state bodies whose task is to fight the corruption.
9. The proposed draft law does not define the specific competence of the anticorruption body which should differ from the competence of other state bodies.
10. The envisaged anticorruption institution is to be founded on principles of company association (director, management board…), which is contrary to the principles of the establishment of state institutions.
11. The draft law does not define the relationship between the anticorruption body and citizens; although there is no existing anticorruption institution functioning without the citizens’ cooperation.
12. The draft law gives no clues which of the positive processive regulations are to be applied by the envisaged anticorruption body.
13. Precisely those institutions which should remain the object of the constant control by the anticorruption body (State Audit Institution, courts…), control the work of the anticorruption body trough its respective representatives, which represents a direct threat to its proclaimed independency.
14. The experience of our country so far, showed that the establishment of such bodies did not contribute to the troubleshooting of the respective problems (Privatization Agency, Republic Broadcasting Agency…); furthermore, that those bodies became highly dependent and powerless to resist any political pressure, and subsequently prone to corruption.
15. Serbia has no need, or time to wait for the establishment of a new anticorruption body, when it already has one, which, both in the country and abroad, has been recognized as a respectable anticorruption institution.

Belgrade, 3 July 2006

Mrs Verica Barac
President of the Council