Acting ex officio, the Agency for Prevention of Corruption reviewed the provisions of the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Prevention of Corruption, submitted by the Anti-Corruption Committee of the Parliament of Montenegro. Taking into account the experience in implementing the Law so far, the Agency has recognized corruption risks and shortcomings in the norms themselves, which make them inapplicable in practice.

Shortcomings were observed in the norms related to the definition of public official, related person and gifts, the obligation to submit reports for members of permanent and temporary working bodies, the prohibition of contracting severance pay in the event of termination of public office and the introduction of two-tiered approach to the work in the Agency, that is, predicting the actions of the Council following an appeal against the Agency's decisions. In addition, the Draft does not contain an assessment of the fiscal impact of the regulation.

The provisions concerning the introduction of new competences of the Agency call for special caution. Among them are monitoring the lifestyle of a public official, accessing the accounts of banks and other financial institutions without the consent of the public official, and issuing a warning if the Agency finds minor deviations of the declared assets and income from the real situation. It is not possible to apply the powers provided in this way without additional elaboration and harmonization with several relevant regulations.

When it comes to the competence of the Parliament, or the competent committee, to initiate the dismissal of individual or all members of the Council of the Agency in cases of negative statements about the reports that need to be submitted to the Parliament or the competent committee, three times during the Council's term, the Agency stated in its Opinion why it believes that this is an example of obvious inappropriate pressure and political influence on its work. The subject provision of the Draft Law is a serious threat to the independence, autonomy and impartiality of the functions of the Council member and the Agency director, which is contrary to the United Nations Convention on Corruption and the recommendations of relevant international organizations on the need to minimize the political influence of the executive and legislative authorities on anti-corruption institutions.

The last, but not least, the transitional and final provisions of the Draft Law were analyzed, which refer to the termination of the term of the members of the Council and the Director of the Agency without first questioning their abilities in procedures established by law. This, among other things, deprives them of the possibility to challenge the termination of their term before the competent courts. A logical and fair solution would be for these persons to perform the function according to the term for which they were elected, except in the case that due to the established responsibility, their term must end, especially considering that the conditions for their election to the relevant positions have not been changed.

The Agency once again calls on the legislative body to recognize the delicacy, complexity, importance and scope of the Law in the field of prevention and suppression of corruption, and to be part of a multidisciplinary process that will look at the relevant international and national documents critically and analytically. It is necessary that the solutions resulting from that process remove the shortcomings of the existing legal framework recognized through seven years of practice, that they be harmonized with international standards in the field of corruption prevention, and first of all with the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the Directive on the Protection of Whistleblowers and the GRECO recommendations from the Fifth Round Evaluation Report on Montenegro, and that the future application of the Law will further strengthen the Agency in the implementation of anti-corruption mechanisms.

The opinion on the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Prevention of Corruption is available at the link.