Week 5: GRECO Recommendations and Boat Tours
This week started off very busy, between a potential new grant and the start of the Annual Meeting. There have been meetings to make sure everything is set for the many guests coming from all over who are attending the Annual Meeting. CEELI helps guest coordinate their flights, transportation to the Villa, and their lodgings, creating a lot of logistical coordination work for the staff.
Additionally, a new funding opportunity presented a chance for me to do some research into GRECO recommendations for select countries. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs proposed a grant for up to $400,000 for a one-year project. In general, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs aims to minimize the impact of international crime and illegal drugs on the Untied State’s citizens, in part through the partnership with other nations to establish capable and accountable criminal justice sectors and stabilize post conflict societies through criminal justice sector development and reform. This particular proposal seeks to support efforts in Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Armenia, and/or Montenegro in their efforts to implement their GRECO Recommendations. Special focus of the recommendations should focus on judicial integrity/independence, criminalizing and enforcing foreign bribery, and transparency of party funding and electoral campaigns.
The process of going through the various versions of GRECO evaluations for those countries and find trends and overlap in potential programmatic opportunities for CEELI takes a lot of time. The GRECO reports have a lot of information and serve as important documents to address the reform needs of the participant countries and as an evaluation tool for the United Nations. In addition, these recommendations are a few years old, so additional research is needed to see what steps (if any) these countries have taken to implement the recommendations. GRECO is an apolitical body with no power to mandate countries implement their recommendations, so there needs to be a good understanding of what has been done to not duplicate efforts. There are recommendations that specifically address judiciary independence needs for those countries, which is CEELI’s bread and butter. However, there are lots of recommendations for legislative reform in the areas of bribery and political campaign finances. CEELI doesn’t have much experience lobbying for legislative reform, but there is an opportunity for CEELI to partner with another organization to tackle both judiciary independence and legislative reform for either bribery or campaign finances. The joint effort could make CEELI an attractive candidate for this grant.
While going through GRECO recommendations, I took a moment to see what judicial recommendations GRECO had provided for the United States. The United States is sort of an odd-ball member of GRECO, as all other members are in Europe or the Eurasia region. In the United States’ summary, it described how the importance of judicial independence is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, however, with federal appointments made by the executive branch, it isn’t a completely apolitical process. However, the report noted that there is a rich tradition of minimizing the political aspect of political appointments to ensure that judicial candidates are selected for their expertise and experience, rather than for political motivations. However, this report was completed in Dec. 2016, and since then there has been a lot of criticism of President Trump attempting to make the judiciary more political. This is the dialogue that occurs within the U.S., but it would be interesting to see if an outside, apolitical group like GRECO believed the concerns about the perceived politicization of the judiciary to be a valid concern.
Finally, this Saturday saw the kick-off to the Annual Meeting. With people beginning to arrive as early as Thursday, CEELI wanted to offer some activities for the board members and other participants to see Prague and have time together before the official conference started on Sunday. The board members who were there on Saturday afternoon, myself and another CEELI staff member took a boat ride on the Vltava River. The ride was beautiful as you pass Prague Castle, Kampa Island, the Dancing House and other major landmarks. It was a great opportunity for me to interact with some of the board members, including the founder of CEELI, Homer Moyer. Following the boat ride, I joined members of the Central and East European Judicial Exchange Network, comprised of young judges from the region, for dinner. I had done some research that supports the initiatives of this group, including the social media use in the judiciary research, so it was great to actually meet some of the people who have been involved in this group for the last couple years.
