Transparency International-Macedonia prepared the report: “National Integrity System of North Macedonia” within the project “EU4 Rule of Law: Citizen Engagement for Public Integrity (CEPI) in the Western Balkans and Turkey”, funded by the European Union and the Government of Switzerland.
The NIS report contains an analysis of the situation with the pillars of the state’s integrity in relation to corruption and the effectiveness of national efforts to deal with corruption. Among the analyzed pillars is the State Electoral Commission, with score 52,7.
Pillar Recommendations
- The government needs to increase the budget of the SEC to enable it to carry out its regular activities in non-election years properly.
- The SEC needs to conduct a functional analysis of staff and skill needs for the functioning of the SEC.
- The SEC should publish an annual report, with details on financial and human resources as well as a comprehensive overview of its activities and statistics on previous elections as well as complaints received.
- The SEC and SCPC need to ensure the proper implementation of the SEC’s integrity plan.
- The SEC needs to amend the existing code of ethics for the SEC’s members and the electoral administration with specific reprimand provisions in the case of established unethical behaviour of staff and members of the central and local electoral bodies.
- The SEC needs to make sure technical issues on vote counting get fixed before the next election and ensure they do not recur.
- The Assembly needs to amend the electoral code to reduce the number of signatures from 10,000 to 5,000 signatures for independent candidates for president of the country; and the number of signatures from 1,000 to 500 to submit to the list of independent candidates for members of the parliament; and decrease by 50 per cent the necessary signatures for independent candidates for mayors to enable more independent candidates to meet the threshold.
National Integrity System Assessment
