Pregledni rad
Europeanization of Public Administration and the Principle of Openness
Petra Đurman
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagreb, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Public administration openness is one of the basic principles of the European administrative space, including public administration visibility and accessibility to citizens, as well as possibility of citizens' involvement in decision making, formulation of policies and regulations. The European Union recognizes openness as a fundamental principle for the functioning of institutions at the European level, but also encourages member and candidate states to adopt and achieve openness in the practice of national administrative organizations, mainly through soft law mechanisms. Since the 2000's, the process of Europeanization has led to numerous adjustments of the Croatian public administration, including the implementation of the principle of transparency and openness, especially during the final stages of the accession process. The issue of public administration openness has been recognized as an important preventive mechanism within the anticorruption policy and has consequently become a part of the European policy of conditionality. Although the instruments for achieving openness are numerous, one of the most common are public consultations or consultations with interested public. Public consultations are regulated at the European level. The practice of the Court of Justice of the EU, the European Commission recommendations and promotion of cooperation and good practice exchange, without concrete binding rules, indicate that it is an area dominated by the so-called horizontal Europeanization and soft law. In Croatia, public consultations are primarily regulated by the Act on the Right to Access Public Information, but also by other laws and bylaws. Normative progress has been achieved in 2009 by issuing The Code of practice on consultation with the interested public in procedures of adopting laws, other regulations and acts. With respect to implementation, improvement has not been achieved before 2013 with amendments to the Act on the Right to Access Public Information, which introduced adequate institutional mechanism for the implementation process. However, the implementation of public consultations is still defective, particularly at the local and regional level, and in the case of the broad legal category of public authorities.
Ključne riječi
public administration; openness; Europeanization; European Union; Croatia; public consultations; implementation of the public consultations
Hrčak ID:
164176
URI
Datum izdavanja:
25.6.2016.
Posjeta: 5.171 *