The Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs, adopted by the Government on 16 December 2025, proposes that a police officer may be dismissed immediately if so-called “security impediments” are established. These impediments are determined by a commission composed of a small group of individuals selected by the Minister of the Interior, without conducting any disciplinary proceedings. Such dismissal automatically applies as well to all police officers against whom disciplinary proceedings based on the same grounds are already pending.

This approach seriously violates the human right to work and the right to a fair procedure, as it allows a narrow political circle to issue dismissals in an uncontrolled and arbitrary manner, based on unverified information. It also enables political purges within the police to be presented as a lawful “vetting” process, even though vetting normally implies an extraordinary procedure carried out by independent expert bodies of proven integrity, and must never be exposed to political arbitrariness such as that allowed by this Draft Law.

The Draft Law is not harmonised with EU law or international conventions, it has not undergone a public consultation process, and its explanatory memorandum does not state that it has received the approval of the European Commission. This is particularly problematic in the context of Montenegro’s EU accession process. Such solutions clearly turn the Police into an instrument of political loyalty, undermining its professionalism, depoliticisation, and consequently public trust.

Below we outline in more detail the particularly problematic provisions of the Draft Law:

• The Commission for Security Impediments, established by the Minister of the Interior (Article 6 of the Draft), is granted extremely broad and uncontrolled powers to decide on recruitment, education, promotion, and termination of employment of police officers by operation of law (Article 24), without clearly defined or verifiable criteria. Decision-making on the fundamental right to work is thus entrusted to a body that is not independent, but directly subordinate to the Minister as a representative of a political party.

• The Draft Law radically changes the existing system of security checks by allowing the Commission to establish the existence of security impedimentseven without an opinion from the National Security Agency (ANB), if the ANB fails to deliver its opinion within the prescribed deadline (Articles 6 and 20). This departs from the previous legal solution, under which the absence of an ANB opinion meant a presumption that security impediments did not exist. In this way, even the minimal institutional safeguard provided by the ANB, as the competent authority for security matters, is removed from the decision-making process.

• It is particularly problematic that candidates for employment in the Police and police officers are only formally notified of the alleged existence of security impediments, without the right to be informed of the reasons, facts, or evidence on which such an assessment is based. This makes effective judicial or administrative review of the decision impossible, reducing the right to a legal remedy to a mere formality. In practice, such a solution allows for the permanent exclusion of individuals from the Police Administration based on secret, unverifiable, and potentially politically motivated assessments.

• The Draft Law abandons the concept of disciplinary responsibility as the primary mechanism for establishing individual guilt and professional accountability (Article 22), which is without exception prescribed by the Law on Civil Servants, allegedly in the interest of efficiency. The proposer claims that the new model is more efficient because termination of employment by operation of law occurs immediately (Article 24), without lengthy disciplinary proceedings, and that “the outcome is the same” as under the current system. This claim is problematic, as it is based on the assumption that security impedimentsare clearly and objectively established, which previous practice contradicts. A summary procedure under the control of the Minister cannot replace a fair process that includes the right to defence, which must be guaranteed in a state governed by the rule of law, not by party control, to anyone whose right to work and personal and professional reputation are at stake.

• The Draft Law also introduces retroactive application of its provisions (Article 26). The Government’s reliance on the “public interest” in order to avoid the constitutional prohibition of retroactive legislation (Article 147 of the Constitution) cannot justify the retroactive application of harsher consequences that automatically lead to termination of employment, especially when they are based on secret and unverifiable security impediments, without the right to a reasoned decision and an effective legal remedy. Such deterioration of the legal position of employees further undermines legal certainty and the right to a fair procedure.

• The concept of security impedimentsis established as a permanent and comprehensive selection mechanism, applying not only to active police officers but also to candidates for trainee positions, participants in professional training programmes within the Police, and candidates for basic and higher police education. This enables continuous checks of “suitability” both at entry into the system and throughout an entire career. As a result, an institutional framework is created for political and ideological filtering of personnel, which is incompatible with the principles of a professional, depoliticised, and democratically controlled police service.

We call on the Government of Montenegro and the Members of Parliament to urgently withdraw the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs from the legislative procedure, and to ensure clearly prescribed, precise, and verifiable criteria for establishing security impediments, together with appropriate procedural safeguards within disciplinary proceedings, including the right to be informed of the allegations and the right to respond to them, i.e. the right to defence.

State security cannot be built by lowering the achieved level of human rights through the removal of procedural guarantees, nor through political selection of personnel, but only on the foundations of the rule of law, which requires the development of professional institutions.