the Slovak EU Council Presidency (source: Jozef Jakubčo)
The Public Procurement Office (ÚVO) claims that the Foreign Affairs Ministry did not violate the law when organising events linked to the country’s six-month EU Council presidency.
It finished its inspection on April 12, the TASR newswire reported.
ÚVO checked whether the ministry met conditions for using an exception from public procurement rules that applies to sub-limit orders and orders to procure goods and services linked to the EU Council presidency.
It also focused on the process of signing agreements of cooperation by the ministry, without any law violation being revealed. This ÚVO issued a decision on March 20, halting the proceeding, TASR reported.
Meanwhile, several former employees of the Foreign Affairs Ministry criticised the practices linked particularly to the opening event of the Slovak presidency, but also the procurement of advertisement spots, films and videos. The ministry has rejected the accusations, TASR wrote.
The ethics watchdog, Transparency International Slovensko (TIS), which pointed to the dubious organisation together with ex-Foreign Affairs Ministry employee Zuzana Hlávková, meanwhile claimed that the published decision has not disproven any of its suspicions concerning the orders linked to the presidency.
“The published decision suggests that it pertains only to the procurement of the opening concert for the public Viva Europa that took place on July 2, 2017, organised by Viva Musica,” TIS wrote in a press release. “The only outcome this decision contains is that the Foreign Affairs Ministry was entitled to use the exception of the law on public procurement for the competitions linked to the Slovak EU Council presidency.”
TIS stressed that the decision does not concern the competition to organise the event to introduce the presidency logo or the audiovisual services and video recordings to the opening concert for VIP guests, the press release reads.
