(Podgorica, 8 June 2011) – Regardless of how the Ministry of Economy chooses to interpret the law, the fact remains that for more than six months since the signing of the agreement with Italy’s Terna, the public still lacks basic information about the undersea energy cable deal.
Last year, MANS demanded from the Ministry of Economy a copy of the agreement detailing the installation of an undersea energy cable, which was signed on 23 November 2010 in Podgorica. Since the Ministry had refused to respond to our request, the Administrative Court in early May 2011 ruled that the government had to comply with our request. This is something that this Ministry is still refusing to do, even though the deadline for compliance with the court ruling has already expired.
The Ministry did, however, respond to another MANS’ request for information on the undersea energy cable and the associated agreements adopted during a Government of Montenegro session held on 7 October 2010. In the Ministry’s response it released the proceedings from the “breaking” to the obtaining of assent from the Montenegrin Electro-distribution System (CGEPS) and Italy’s Terna as the contracting parties.
Information relating to the undersea energy cable that MANS had requested also included requests for the Purchase-and-Sale Agreement by means of registering shares from the new issue proceeding from the expansion of CGEPS’s capital, to the Strategic and Shareholders Agreement and the Agreement for the Coordination of the Project.
In its response, dated 3 February 2011, the Ministry of Economy explicitly stated that the above documents contain: “conditions stating that the contracting parties shall not be releasing public statements that relate to these agreements without the prior written consent of all the signatories.”
The Ministry of Economy’s response violates the Law on Free Access to Information, since it fails to take into account the ‘injury test’
demonstrating whether releasing this information would prove a greater injury to the private interests of the signatories than to the public’s interest in knowing what is contained in these documents. It is due to this type of response from the Ministry that MANS submitted a complaint to the Administrative Court.
However, regardless of the above facts, it is worrying that the Government continues to conclude agreements in which it undertakes commitments to hide key information from its own citizens, while simultaneously demanding that they finance such projects.
It is unclear how the Government thinks it will include the public in decision-making in the public hearings concerning the route of the energy cable if the Ministry of Economy is not ready to release even the most basic information about the contents of the agreement with Terna. Above all, the question of whether the public hearings are event useful, given that everything has already been agreed upon with the Italian partner, arises.
Of
course, we can’t know any details of this plan, since the Ministry has already decided that it will place private interests above the rights of its citizenry to knowledge about such matters.
When it comes to the Law Confirming the Agreement between Montenegro and Italy on Implementing an Undersea Interconnection, whose release the Ministry considers the height of transparency, we believe that it would be elementarily correct to clarify for the public that at hand is a framework agreement containing the basic outlines for the realization of this deal and that subsequently to this, the Government, CGEPS and Terna signed a totally new agreement whose contents are being hidden from the public.
We would again like to remind Minister Vladimir Kavarić of the European Parliament’s Resolution on Montenegro, which clearly recommends that all information in the government’s possession concerning the undersea energy cable be made public.
