Ministry of Finance, Croatia PROGRESSING FROM BUDGET TRANSPARENCY TO ACCESSIBILITY TO PARTICIPATION - Croatian experience - Washington DC, 2017

Content INTRODUCTION CROATIA & GLOBAL INITIATIVES Open Government Partnership (OGP) International Budget Partnership – Open Budget Survey Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMENDATIONS

INTRODUCTION In past years significant moves were made regarding budget transparency and citizen’s participation in budgetary processes The number of measures were taken in order to increase transparency and citizen participation in fiscal and budgetary processes mainly due to the accession to the EU and the Partnership for Open Government Demands by the European Union, OECD, IMF and World Bank were and still are: to encourage transparency of the public sector, government accountability and citizen’s participation to increase the satisfaction and trust of citizens and to achieve a better balance between the aspirations of citizens and the possibility of the government to implement more efficient fiscal and budgetary policies

CROATIA & GLOBAL INITIATIVES By joining Ministry of Finace in the global initatives Croatia boosts its transparancy and participation at the national level Part of Open Government Partnership initiative from 2011 Part of International Budget Partnership - Open Budget Survey Part of the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) and GIFT steward from 2017 NEW

OGP in Croatia A multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. Priority challenge in the last period and in Croatia’s Action Plans was to have more efficient public resource management. Special attention was given to strengthening fiscal transparency – to be more open towards the public concerning the structure and functions of authorities fiscal policy objectives, public sector account and projections unhindered access to reliable, comprehensive, timely, comprehensible and internationally comparable information about the Government activities

Almost 80 percent of the activities is being caried out by OGP in Croatia 9 public authority bodies responsible for the implementation of the activities under measures envisaged by the OGP Action Plan Almost 80 percent of the activities is being caried out by The Ministry of Finance – responsible for fiscal transparency Ministry of Administration – responsible for access to information and the use of information technology Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs is responsible for 6 activities – responsible for initiatives dealing with citizens and citizen participation.

OGP in Croatia - fiscal transparency According to the review of progress in implementation significant progress was made in the past period concearning fiscal transparency Overview of the state budget execution by suppliers publicly available service (application) of the state budget execution by which the users can easily see payments made from the state budget to the specific supplier (using the supplier’s personal identification number - OIB) publicly searchable database of payments made from the state budget’s single account in accordance with the prescribed budget classifications In the draft of the new Action Plan for implementation of the OGP initiative in the Republic of Croatia it is enviseged to upgrade the application in line with the comments from NGOs and wider public so that it has additional features

Publicly searchable database

Publicly searchable database – example

OGP in Croatia - fiscal transparency Citizen’s guides - key budget documents are being prepared and published on the web pages of the Ministry of finance – abstracts that are simple and understandable to citizens for key budget documents: Guidelines for Economic and Fiscal Policy, the proposed state budget and projections, budget and projections adopted by the Croatian Parliament, semi-annual and annual state budget execution PROBLEM: a lot of work to be done with lots of effort and the outcomes were not valued enough by the public – question of motivation example: only few visits to the citizen’s guide to the budget

OGP in Croatia - fiscal transparency Historical development of the transparency principle in Croatia shows that we have reached high level of transparency set out in the laws and bylaws PROBLEM: we are still facing problems regarding the implementation in practice Example: In the last amendments of the Budget Act from 2015 the following obligation was introduced: local and regional governments and budget users and extra-budgetary users are obliged to post their annual financial statements on their internet sites not later than eight days after the date of their submission Although this obligation was introduced State Audit Office worn the Ministry of Finance that many of the budgetary users do not comply with it In order to have transparancy in line with the law it is our obligation to use corrective mesures that are given to us by the law

OGP in Croatia - participtive budgeting During the last few years much more was done regarding transparency than in the field of participative budgeting The unusual thing is that participative budgeting is actually more developed on the local level State level: external experts in the Finance and Central Budget Committee meetings organized by MoF with macroeconomic experts outside the public sector (during the budgetary proces) open discussion during the law making process (public consultation, public discussion) planning of revenues from games of chance is done in cooperation with Interdepartmental committee for the coordination of financing policies for NGO projects and programs (the sessions of the committee sre attended by the NGOs)

International Budget Partnership in Croatia -The Open Budget Survey Only independent, comparative, and regular measure of budget transparency, participation, and oversight in the world Covering three aspects of how governments are managing public finances and giving separate points on each of these three: Budget transparency Budget participation Budget oversight Ministry of Finance as part of the research process is invited to provide comments on the draft Open Budget Questionnaire that our civil society partners have completed. We see this as a unique opportunity for the MoF to express comments and provide additional evidence to support the answers to the questions included in the Survey, before the responses are finalized and the Survey results are published Parliamentary elections were held 11 September 2016. The Parliament was constituted 14 October 2016 and the Government was constituted 19 October 2016.

International Budget Partnership in Croatia -The Open Budget Survey The results of the Open Budget Survey influence the layout of the Budget and in that way directly the work of the MoF Example: In Budget layout for 2016. MoF added additional colum (execution for the previous year) in line with the Open Budget Survey suggestions

International Budget Partnership in Croatia -The Open Budget Survey PROBLEMS: It is necessary to work on better understanding of the budget participation concept for the public servants who fill out the questionnaire The methodology does not foresee unexpected events (for example early election) in Croatia we had a turbulant political situation for 2 years that influenced our budgetary process - the points given in answering certain questions were lower due to methodology that does not take this into account

Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) in Croatia Engagement to promote discussions on advancing the common goal of transparent, participatory and accountable management of fiscal policies and push for increasing fiscal transparency, participation and accountability in our area of responsibility in our country. MoF of the Republic of Croatia is an active participant in GIFT and a steward since beginning of 2017. We participated in drafting: Principles of Public Participation in Fiscal Policy and Guide on Principles and Mechanisams of Public Participation in Fiscal Policy

Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) in Croatia Two different views on Public Participation in Fiscal Policy Government NGOs Stronger involvemant of government institutions in GIFT and other international initiatives result in better outcomes of the initiatives with more „inside” info from the goverment institutions that are in the end owners of the proceses Example: inputs of the MoF in drafting the questions for the Open budget Survey Main reson why goverments should be more involved in GIFT

Looking more on the demand side Future plans Looking more on the demand side Who are those who use the data How many of them is there Cost benefit analyses (time used by the civil servents and useage of data produced) Adressing main challenges: lack of political will lack of organizational and professional opportunities of the public administration lack of interest and lack of information of the citizens lack of non-governmental organizations specialized for the fiscal/budgetary transparency and citizen participation researchers and media should be more involved in analyzing of the budget