HRA receives EU Commission reply: Police politicization in Montenegro is a red line
Human Rights Action (HRA) has received a reply from the European Commission to the letter sent on 19 December 2025, in which we pointed out the controversial Draft Amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs of Montenegro, particularly in relation to the human rights of police officers and the risk of politicization of the police.
In its reply, the European Commission confirms that these issues are being examined as matters of the rule of law in the context of Montenegro’s EU accession process. The Commission recalled that the rule of law is a fundamental value of the European Union and emphasized that all amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs must be aligned with EU law and international standards.
Significantly, the European Commission highlighted the need for “appropriate procedural safeguards to be in place to prevent undue political interference in law enforcement authorities, ” thereby directly confirming the essence of the concerns raised by the HRA.
The Commission also notes that the revised version of the amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs has been submitted to the European Commission and is “currently under assessment by the relevant Commission’s services to check compliance with the EU acquis and European standards.”
This formulation clearly indicates that the proposed legislative solutions have not been pre-approved and will still be evaluated in relation to the protection of human rights, the institutional independence of the police, and the prohibition of political influence.
HRA warns that adopting a law that allows arbitrary decisions on the status of police officers — without clear criteria, the right to defense, and effective judicial review — would represent a serious setback in the area of the rule of law and could negatively affect Montenegro’s EU integration process. For this reason, we expect the Government of Montenegro to withdraw the draft law from parliamentary procedure until the opinion of the European Commission is obtained, as previously promised.
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