EU reforms bypassed security services: After NATO membership, ANB does not even provide statistical data

The reform of the security services should be an indispensable part of the negotiations for membership in the European Union (EU), according to representatives of the civil sector in the countries of the Western Balkans, because "there is no progress in the rule of law if the services are not reformed".

"Perhaps the most illustrative example, in recent times, is the case of Marko Parezanović who, as the head of the Belgrade Center of the Security and Information Agency (BIA), indicated that the greatest threat to the security of Serbia is the covert action of individuals through opposition parties, trade unions, and non-governmental organizations," he said. Predrag Petrović, from the Belgrade Center for Security Policy (BCBP), speaking about the mechanisms of capture by the security services.

In Serbia, there is a bad trend of politicization of the security services, Petrović said, citing as an example the Council for National Security (a body that was formed in 2007 to consider issues of importance for national security and guide the work of the security services).

"With the previous government (the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party of Serbia until 2012, ed.) we had a situation where the head of the president's cabinet was, by law, the secretary of the National Security Council, through whom the previous president of Serbia exercised significant influence on security - the intelligence sector and the security services," Petrović said.

He says that, however, this illegitimate influence of the president and politicians continued even after the change of government and that practically the first law that was changed in 2012, after the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) took over power, was the Law on the Basics of Security Services, which changed the way in which the secretary of the National Security Council is elected and where it was said that the President of the Republic appoints the secretary of the National Security Council.

"Perhaps we have an even more perverse influence of politics on the work of the security services with the appointment of Bratislava Gašić as the director of the Security and Information Agency (BIA). I ​​think that for the first time in Serbia we have a high-ranking official of the ruling political party as the director of the BIA. I am not sure that there is such a thing somewhere in recorded in Europe", notes Petrović, reminding that Gašić is an official of SNS, the party of the state president Aleksandar Vučić.

The BIA, the successor to the former State Security, has not been reformed in Serbia, or at least the public has not been particularly informed about the changes within this most notorious state system from the reign of Slobodn Milošević.

It should be recalled that one of the leaders of the former DB, Radomir Marković, is serving a prison sentence (40 years) for the criminal offense of premeditated murder (an associate of the opposition leader Vuk Drašković on the Ibar highway in 2000), while in the first instance he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija two decades ago.

Montenegro: Care for the Agency and security

One of the reasons why in the current process of European integration of Montenegro, the intelligence sector was in no way included in the requirements towards Podgorica, is that Montenegro received an invitation to join NATO in 2016, which implied the reform of the defense and security sector. says Dina Bajramspahić from the Institute of Alternatives.

However, she states that for NATO, of which Montenegro has been a full member since June 2017, the most important thing is to create the conditions for the exchange of data and that Montenegro does not endanger NATO members in this sense, and that the issues of transparency and responsibility are not covered. .

"After Montenegro joined NATO, the National Security Agency (ANB) was completely closed. Until 2009, we were able to access statistical data on the application of secret surveillance measures, mainly data related to monitoring and electronic eavesdropping, which we no longer have today. Namely, our Agency claims that the publication of statistical data would endanger national security," said Bajramspahić.

Lessons from the Macedonian case

The most drastic example of abuse of the security services occurred in North Macedonia, where the Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence illegally eavesdropped on thousands of citizens from 2008 to the end of 2015.

Magdalena Lembovska, from the Center for European Strategies - EUROTHINK, says that there were some early signs that might not have been noticed in time. She states that, among other things, the intelligence services did not have a clear mandate determined by law.

"It was not clear which service was in charge of what, so it was not known to whom to direct certain questions and it was not possible to monitor the work of the services. There was no information about their work, supervision and control. Although there were attempts by the parliamentary committee to supervise the work service, the services always managed to prevent those rare attempts. In the meantime, the budget for the work of the service has been significantly increased several times, mainly through budget rebalancing. We have never been informed why the service needed those additional financial resources, what equipment was purchased by the money, why it was bought and for what purposes it was used. Later we found out that some of that equipment was used for illegal wiretapping," said Lembovska.

A step back in Serbia

Predrag Petrović says that in Serbia there was a good practice and standards of control of the security services established by the former protector of citizens Saša Janković, who carried out several in-depth inspections of the work of these services.

"We don't have that today. The Protector of Citizens is no longer involved in the control and supervision of the security services. And the Parliamentary Committee for the Control of the Security Services serves to award plaques to people who lead, above all, the Ministry of Internal Affairs," Petrović said.

In the Strategy for the Western Balkans, which was published in 2018, the European Commission stated that the problem of captive states affects the entire Western Balkans region, but did not name any individual state. A captive state implies the absence of the rule of law, seriously collapsed freedom of the media, politicization of the judiciary, turning party interests into public ones.