Control of Municipalities Following International Standards

At the final day of the Conference on the development of internal control mechanisms, Reinhald Danneleit, Director of the OSCE Mission Public Administration Reform Department, presented a Draft Internal Control Rulebook for municipalities. Municipalities with no systematic control The control of local adminstration is the main subject of the conference organized in Mostar. The draft represents a compendium of tools and instruments regarding internal control within municipalities. It was prepared by members of the Working Group consisting of representatives of both BiH Entities, representatives of municipalities and OSCE advisers. Danneleit emphasised that municipalities currently do not have systematic internal control mechanisms. "We had the opportunity to meet with mayors of municipalities and now they have a platform from which to begin. The Mayors now have a chance to explain to their personnel that they should not work in a superficial manner," Danneleit emphasised, adding that these problems cannot be resolved with procedures only. Also, Danneleit stated that the mayors of BIH municipalities were aware that there has been a lack of political will in the past and that an additional problem was a lack of qualified personnel. "A big problem is the fact that duties have not been assigned properly - one cannot allow for a person dealing with financial issues in the municipality to simultaneously be in charge of an internal audit," Danneleit said. Necessity of introduction of amendments and addendums to the law Magdalena Kouneva, representative of the European Centre for Minority Rights, agreed that not even the best rules of procedure have an impact for a municipality if they remain just words on a page. "What we are preparing now, with the assistance of municipalities, is a rulebook on best internal control rules, which seeks to ensure establishment of a model which municipalities can use to produce their own efficient system," Kouneva said, emphasising that the improvement must become an integral part of the municipality-management culture. She also emphasised that the significance of internal control is that it is based on elements resulting from international internal control standards, which are the results of EU guidelines. OSCE representatives agreed that not even the best will in the implementation of the aforementioned will be sufficient without the introduction of amendments and addendums to the law at entity level.

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