The Committee on Political System, Judiciary and Administration today, on Sunday, acting as the competent committee of the Parliament of Montenegro, adopted the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs and sent it to the plenary, despite earlier announcements that deliberations would wait until alignment with the positions of official Brussels.

The Committee’s session on Friday was not announced on the Parliament’s official website, thereby deliberately excluding the interested public from participating in the debate. Such practice cannot be regarded as a mere procedural error, but rather as a direct undermining of the principle of transparency in the work of Parliament.

We recall that the Minister of Interior, Danilo Šaranović, previously stated that they expected approval from the European Commission before submitting the law to Parliament for a vote. Despite this public pledge, the law was nevertheless forwarded into further parliamentary procedure without waiting for the opinion of the European Commission.

Likewise, at the 44th session of the Committee on Security and Defence, it was stated that the position of the Europe Now Movement was that prior opinion of the European Commission was necessary before considering this law. That position has now been overturned, and three PES MPs nevertheless voted in favor of the Draft at the competent committee.

The Draft Law, pushed to the plenary in this way, does not contain the amendments that certain officeholders had discussed publicly. There is no classification of “security risks” into major and minor, nor have safeguards against abuse been introduced. Instead, provisions have been adopted that allow unverified operational information or even mere rumors to result in the termination of employment of a police officer by force of law — without the right to see the reasons, without the right to a defense, and without the right to an effective legal remedy.

In addition, the European Commission informed HRA, by letter one day before the start of the Christmas holidays, that a revised version of the amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs had been submitted to the Commission and is “currently under assessment by the relevant Commission services, with a view to verifying compliance with the EU acquis and European standards,” and that “it must be ensured that recruitment procedures in the police are merit-based and that adequate procedural safeguards are in place to prevent undue political influence over law enforcement bodies.”

The adoption of a law that so profoundly interferes with human rights — on a Sunday, without public announcement of the session, without public participation, and without the opinion of the European Commission — represents a deliberate undermining of democratic procedures and seriously calls into question the sincerity of the authorities’ declared commitment to European standards and European integration.

This is not a reform of the security system — this is the institutionalization of legal uncertainty and political arbitrariness.