The Council of Ministers, at its session on 7 May 2015, adopted the Strategy for Combating corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the period 2015-2019 and the Action Plan for its implementation and thereby determined the manner in which the fight against corruption in the country will take place in the next five years. With the adoption of the Strategy and Action Plan, according to the words of the Director of the Agency Mr. Sead Lisak, the new convocation of the Council of Ministers showed commitment to the fight against corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina as one of the key reform priorities of the country.

The Strategy and Action Plan have been developed in the period from May 2014 to January 2015, with technical assistance from the IPA service Project “Support to the anti-corruption” and the participation of over 20 institutions from the level of BiH, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and Brcko District of BiH, as well as four non-governmental organizations active in the fight against corruption, in the intersectoral working group convened by the Agency. As a reminder, the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight against Corruption, in January 2015, sent to the Council of Ministers for adoption the new Strategy for the fight against corruption and the Action plan for its implementation. New Strategy and Action Plan, apart from being adjusted to the specificities of the constitutional structure of BiH, provide the basis to the lower levels of the government to design their own anti-corruption strategies, which will comply with the general principles of the Strategy at the national level.

In the process of providing technical assistance to the Agency in the preparation of the Strategy and Action Plan, the Project “Support to anti-corruption” has conducted research on the effects of implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan for the period 2009 – 2014, developed the methodology for the preparation of the new Strategy and Action Plan, and has organized four workshops that were used for reviewing the various drafts of the strategic anti-corruption documents. With the help of the Project, before the final version of the Strategy and Action Plan for the period 2015 – 2019, the Agency has prepared three drafts of the Strategy and two drafts of the Action Plan.

The Strategy consists of five pillars of which the first deals with strengthening of the institutional and legal framework of institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the second with the development, promotion and implementation of preventive anti-corruption activities in the public and private sector, the third with improvement of the effectiveness and efficiency of the judiciary and law enforcement agencies in the area of the fight against corruption. The fourth focuses on raising public awareness and promoting the need for participation of the whole society in the fight against corruption and the fifth on the establishment of efficient mechanisms for coordination of the fight against corruption, as well as monitoring the implementation of the Strategy. The essence of the document is the fight against corruption at its root, by eliminating the conditions that are favourable to the emergence of corruption, rather than dealing with its consequences.

All future activities of the Project in the next 9 months will be fully in line with the adopted Strategy and Action Plan as well as the needs that arise from them.

To download those document, please visit the link: http://pak.ba/deliverables.php?ot=documents