The Ministry of interior should follow actual efforts of the European Union for strengthening the mechanisms for police acting with integrity, ensuring transparency for its’ work in the community. The starting pre-condition for the development of the police integrity is to protect the procedure for accepting new police officers, that will guarantee that the employment contract in the Ministry of interior will be offered to the best candidates.
The test for integrity is a good tool which in the next period can give the expected results, but it is necessary to follow and improve its implementation and to estimate if the existing solution is fulfilling the needs for which the test is being introduced.
The Ministry of interior should initiate expert’s dialogue for the efficiency of the existing instruments for collecting, updating, managing and realization of the complaints of the citizens, so that bigger transparency of the police work is achieved. This needs to be done with involvement of the representatives of the authorized institutions, international police bodies (OSCE, CoE, ISITAP) and the civil sector. Good European practice can improve the trust between the police and the citizens in the Republic of North Macedonia.
These are some of the draft-recommendations which were discussed at todays’ 14 session of the Working group 4 (Chapter 24) “Justice, freedom and security” on the topic “„Through professionalism and integrity to transparency and accountability in the police“ that was held in Skopje, organized by European movement in Republic of North Macedonia within the project National Convention on European Union in the Republic of North Macedonia (NCEU-MK).
Mileva Gjurovska, national coordinator of NCEU-MK and president of the European movement in Republic of North Macedonia in her introduction emphasized that the Chapter 24 is significant because it refers to area out of which the state sovereignty comes out and upon which the basis for functioning of the institutions and protection of public interests lay.
„It is to be noted that whole series of recommendations are coming out from different sides (EU, international organizations, civil organizations and others). Many of them are repeated which demonstrates that the process of reforms is slow and that the decision makers are becoming insensitive even for EU recommendations. This especially refers to the recommendations connected to prevention and fight against corruption”, Gjurovska underlined, adding that this Working group has held 13 sessions and is active for more than 6 years now.
Trpe Stojanovski, professor at the Faculty for security within the University “St. Kliment Ohridski”-Bitola believes that the basic expectations by the police in a democratic society is for it to implement the law with the support from the citizens.
Talking about the screening process, Stojanovski said that one of the recommendations is that in our country there are good laws, but concrete implementation of these laws is missing.
„The police in continuity has high level of trust compared to other institutions, but there is room for further improvement”, professor Stojanovski emphasized in his speech.
Odd Berner Malme, senior advisor at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime talked about the importance of the transparency, accountability and the integrity of police.
Malme, who works on police reforms in Western Balkans in the last ten years said that the police influence in the process of operative brining decisions is unacceptable, and so is the situation with the police interference in investigations too.
Naum Panoski, public prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor’s office in the Republic of North Macedonia spoke about the new Department for organized crime and corruption within the Prosecutor’s office. Panoski underlined that more citizens report crimes connected to police work in the prosecutor’s office.
„The cooperation with the Ministry of interior is on solid basis. As a state and Public prosecution solid progress has been made, in terms of systematic and legislative progress compared to the period before existence of the Department”, Panoski emphasized.
Мikael Koskeniemi, project manager in a project supported by the Kingdom of Sweden “Police work in the community of North Macedonia“ said that the democratic police must be based on four pillars, including respect and protection of human rights, accountability of the police, accountability towards external controlors (State ombudsman, Public prosecution etc.) and the police to be in service of particular groups. According to him, it is necessary for strong mechanisms to be established, as well as strong partnership with the organizations in the community.
Nikola Dujovski, the dean at the faculty for security within the University “St. Kliment Ohridski”-Bitola emphasized that the state is at the beginning with building police integrity. Talking about the work of police, Dujovski pointed out that the Ministry of interior has made mistakes in the part where public procurements take place, illustrating as an example that out of 100 procurements, 97 are repeated.
„We still need to work on depolitization and departization of police“, Dujovski said.
According to him, there is desparate need of much more police offices, because there is not enough sufficient interes for police service.
Mark Dixon, head of Public Safety and Community Outreach Department in OSCE underlined that there is a need for surveillance over police, especially in form of civil surveillance.
„There is strong need for executive power to be separated from the work of police. If this is made, strong steps forward will be done“, Dixon underlined.
Frosina Kruskarovska, researcher at “Eurothink“ has presented the results from the project “Improving the transparency and accountability of the police in the Republic of North Macedonia“, saying that the general trend of citizens trust in all institutions in declining, even though there is trend of encrasing the citizens trust in police compared to previous years.
At today’s session, it was concluded that the transparency, accountability and integrity are key issues for bigger trust in the police and its bigger professionalism in service of the citizens.
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The project National Convention on European Union in the Republic of North Macedonia is a platform for including the civil sector in debates for topics in connection to the process of European integration, so that all state capacities for the upcoming process of negotiations with EU to be prepared. The project is realized by European movement in the Republic of North Macedonia and is financed by the European Delegation in the Republic of North Macedonia and SlovakAid.