“Integrity in public expenditure: How does Romania use public money in the context of the current financial crisis?”

Project Summary
This project has supposed the organization of a conference on public funding in Romania, which has brought together representatives from relevant public institutions and associations of private entities along with members of civil society organizations involved in monitoring government agencies. The object of this event has been the assessment of the level of integrity in the sphere of public funding and the formulation of recommendations for its improvement.

Conference Agenda (pdf) 

The conference comprised three main stages. A general description of the regulatory framework of the Romanian public procurement system has been drawn, and it has been followed by an integrity-related evaluation of the current practices herein, along with a risk assessment in the acquisition process. In the end, priorities and recommendations aiming at reducing the main integrity flaws have been formulated.

Regulatory Framework of the Romanian Public Procurement System 

[in Romanian only] (pdf)
Integrity assessment in the Romanian Public Procurement System  [in Romanian only] (pdf)
Clean Public Procurement System. Policy Paper (doc) 

Project Aims
The main goal of this project was to assess the public procurement sector’s vulnerability to corruption so as to set up the grounds for precise recommendations in terms of policy proposals in this public area. These have come out from the debates and have been corroborated with Transparency International Romania’s findings in a policy paper aiming at setting up some guidelines for improving the performance of the Romanian public procurement sphere in terms of integrity.

The two specific objectives that have been accomplished were to bring at the same table relevant representatives of public institutions and of the private sector, public acquisitions experts, and members of civil society, and to reach a consensus on the further steps to be taken in terms of priorities and recommendations.

Another specific objective was to bring into debate international public acquisition and public spending best practices that can be taken as a model by the Romanian practitioners. This part of the agenda has been focused on the proposition of institutionalizing “Integrity Pacts” in the public procurement and spending sphere. In general terms, this model represents a tool to prevent and fight corruption in public contracting, which comprises a legal commitment on anti-bribery, integrity and transparency principles, concluded between government authorities and bidders (the signatories) with the participation of civil society as facilitator and independent monitor.

Best Practice framework for clean public contracting (pdf) 

Project Outcomes
The project resulted in an overall analysis of the current public procurement and public spending state of the art in terms of legal grounds and actual practices, with the contribution of one Romanian expert and trainer in public acquisitions, and that of an international expert in the same area. It provided an inside view of the system’s functionality, aiming to identify the weak points and failures in addressing public procurement and public spending from an integrity perspective regarding its mode of functioning.

Ti-Ro’s role in the project 

  1. facilitating dialogue between the public authorities and the private sector on public procurement
  2. centralizing vulnerabilities, priorities and recommendations regarding the public procurement sector in a policy paper
  3. ensuring continuity of the project by subsequent events on the same subject.

Budget
€ 6790

Sponsors
The American Embassy in Bucharest
The Embassy of Canada to Romania 


Data publicare: 21/10/2009