At today’s meeting, the Collegium of the President of the Parliament of Montenegro has considered issues related to the current and upcoming parliamentary activities.

The Collegium of the President has expressed pleasure with the presence of observer delegations from the Council of Europe, European Parliament and ODIHR at the presidential election of 15 April, as well as with preliminary findings and conclusions of the International Observation Mission. These state that existing framework as a whole provides a good basis for conducting democratic elections, noting also that the willingness has been expressed for continuation of reforms in the field of election legislation, which is confirmed by the recent amendments covering numerous recommendations by the ODIHR and Venice Commission.

With regard to the EC’s Progress Report, the Collegium of the President has considered the key findings and guidelines, related to achieved reforms and further progress of Montenegro on its integration process. Bearing in mind that the Progress Report notes that the legislative and oversight role of the Parliament have been aggravated by non-participation of the opposition in its work, a special devotion was paid to the position dealing with the responsibility of all political actors for parliamentary dialogue and oversight role of the Parliament. As for the remark from the Report that the Parliament has kept high level of transparency, the Collegium of the President concluded that the recommendations from the Report were in line with the planned activities of further improvement of the parliamentary work, both at administrative and political level.

The Collegium of the President has noted that the Report on addressing recommendations by the State Audit Institution (SAI) was delivered within legally prescribed deadline. By addressing the SAI requests, the shortcomings that had prevented the proper functioning of the parliamentary service have been removed. To remind, President of the Parliament of Montenegro Mr Ivan Brajović, soon after his election as top official of the highest legislative body, initiated the engagement of the responsible state authorities to determine facts and accountability, while on that occasion, the SAI controlled for the first times, after ten years, the work of the Parliament of Montenegro.