Defence sector is traditionally known as one of the least transparent areas of government, not just in the Balkans, but globally. This is understandable due to its nature, but having in mind defence is one of the highest-spending sectors, increasing transparency in the defence sector is of great importance to increasing trust between the governments and the citizens.
Judging by transparency levels in the region, substantial room for improvement still exists. The transparency levels in the region vary depending on the country and little has changed compared to last year’s findings. Croatia has recorded slight backsliding, due to reintroducing the “Book 2” containing classified procurements among other things, but still remains at the top in the region when it comes to transparency of the defence sector. Montenegro is the runner-up in this segment and has moderately improved since last year. North Macedonia continues to demonstrate its commitment to transparency, while there is still room for improvement in terms of budgeting. Serbia is responsive to FOI requests and shares relevant documents on the website, but the legal arrangements adopted in 2016 and 2018 enabled entire categories of data to be classified, negatively affecting transparency. Bosnia and Herzegovina has one of the least transparent budgets and this year’s response to the FOI request has omitted state donations, but the MoD website could be described as moderately transparent. Albania is still the least transparent, a finding solidified by the MoD’s initial refusal to respond to the freedom of information request submitted by the partners of the BDM research team, followed by delivering only a portion of the requested information after the intervention of the national Information and Data Protection Commissioner.
All the countries have mechanisms for free access to public information in place, with some of them pointing that out on the defence ministries’ websites or even publishing reports on the utilisation of this mechanism, as in the case of Croatia. For the purpose of this research, FOI requests were sent to the MoDs of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. All except Albania have delivered timely responses. The Albanian MoD invoked confidentiality as grounds for rejecting the request and refused to respond even after the intervention of the national Information and Data Protection Commissioner. Ultimately, Albanian MoD agreed to share some of the requested information after a hearing session was facilitated between representatives of the MoD and Balkan Defence Monitor’s local partners and it delivered data solely on percentage of women in the defence sector and implementation of the UNSCR 1325. This is certainly a case of a setback, since Albania had provided majority of requested information for the previous editions of the Balkan Defence Monitor without the procedure involving the national Commissioner. When it comes to financial information, transparency significantly fluctuates. Croatia is still the only country in the region whose budget includes specific procurement projects broken down into categories of costs, which is a good transparency practice that other countries should consider adopting. All countries publish defence budgets on their websites, with some of them also publishing public procurement plans and reports on implementation of the defence budget. These reports, published by North Macedonia and Serbia, present an example of good practice in transparency. All countries except Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina have delivered information on foreign donations, while some of the countries occasionally publish articles about these donations on their websites. Montenegro has been the most transparent in the region regarding its donations to Ukraine, with North Macedonia close behind. Croatia has kept these data classified, which contributed to the assessment of a setback in transparency.
Strategic documents are generally accessible on websites; however, the countries should ensure concordance between multiple language versions of their websites. Transparency could be further improved by a proper organisation of respective MoD websites or pages, as in the case of Montenegro. Croatia, Serbia and North Macedonia have the easiest access to relevant documents on their websites, while in the case of Montenegro they usually have to be accessed through search. All the countries except Serbia (and this year, Albania) have delivered or published statistical data on human resources and percentage of women in the defence sector. Croatia and Montenegro remain the most transparent in the segment of human resources thanks to their annual defence reports, which cover all relevant information from the defence sector. Other countries should consider introducing the practice of publishing such defence reports as well.
Croatia remains the most transparent in all areas, followed by Montenegro, while Albania can be described as the least transparent, due to the least disaggregated budget and the MOD website not working. North Macedonia has been improving in transparency as the website of MOD is well organized and contains most of relevant information. On the other hand, Serbia has recorded backsliding in transparency since legislative amendments from 2016 to 2018, which enabled the MOD to arbitrarily classify entire categories of data as secret and restrict access to information on human resources management (for instance, number of newly appointed staff, data on personnel attrition etc.) and a number of strategic documents and reports.
Generally speaking, access to information related to the defence sector in the Balkans varies to a considerable extent, depending on the country and thematic area. All countries have mechanisms for access to public information in place, but their effectiveness is rather questionable, and the responses from the some of the Ministries received by BCSP vary in quality compared to the ones received for the previous edition of Balkan Defence Monitor. Considering proactive publication of information on the websites of institutions, all Ministries occasionally share news on relevant donations, military drills or specific projects, but access to data related to human resources is not always easily accessible and not all information is up to date.
When it comes to financial information, budgets of the ministries of defence, as parts of annual national budgets, can be found on the governments’ websites of all six countries. However, these budgets differ to a large extent, with Croatian being the most and Albanian the least transparent, judging by criteria such as the level of disaggregation and references to specific procurement projects. While information about donations cannot always be easily accessed, all ministries are somewhat responsive to requests for access to public information related to foreign donations and most of them publish news articles related to donations on their websites.
Strategic documents are generally accessible, with certain exceptions which are classified as secret as in the case of Serbia, or when they cannot be obtained via research, like with some documents from Albania and Montenegro. Only Bosnia and Herzegovina has its Military Doctrine published on the website. All countries except Serbia provide data on the total number of personnel disaggregated into ranks upon the FOI request or on their website in the case of Croatia, but Croatia and Montenegro are the most transparent in the area of human resources, as their annual defence reports provide data on military education or staff turnover, for example. Gender transparency is a weak spot for all countries, with only Croatia proactively publishing the percentage of women across military ranks on the Armed Forces website. All countries, however, delivered this data upon FOI request. Reporting on National Actions Plans for implementation of UNSCR 1325 is not systematic and it is hard to compare the data, even if the reports themselves could be described as quite detailed and transparent in most of the cases.
