The Coalition for the Future of Montenegro (ZBCG) announced that it is necessary to urgently propose a law on agents of foreign influence in Montenegro.
They said that it fell to them to make Montenegro a truly free country.
They state that one of the important directions of action should be the preparation and adoption of a new law that will regulate the functioning of various foreign agencies that, under the guise of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), "try to influence the internal and foreign policy of our country".
"Political organizations are obliged by law to make their finances public and their control is carried out by the competent State Audit Institution (DRI), and this is not the case with these agencies that abuse the name of NGO while injections of millions of dollars are injected into their budgets on a regular basis. Our political activity is in the very focus of the public and there is no argument that we work for anyone's interests except for the interests of the voters and citizens of Montenegro," the announcement states.
ZBCG said that only because of the lack of an adequate law, in Montenegro today "we have not one, but several 'NGOs' that function outside and above the law and that give themselves the right to nonchalantly hand out moral lessons and labels to almost all political, but also state institutions".
"Those agencies subvert, lie and run a very precise campaign for the needs of the foreign client they work for, while those clients have concrete interests related to their influence in Montenegro, which are certainly not the interests and wishes of the citizens. As their mouths are full of other people's finances and influence, it is high time that the citizens of Montenegro have an insight into theirs and that such agencies are clearly separated from real NGOs whose goal is to improve the quality of life of citizens, and that we call them by their real name - agents of foreign influence in Montenegro," the ZBCG emphasized.
"True transparency can only come if the laws and rules are valid for everyone. We are invited as the government, and we have no doubt that the opposition also wants this, that the politics of Montenegro should be separated from the brutal agency work of various international security structures", it is concluded in announcement.
Following the example of Russia
The law on "foreign agents" was introduced in Russia in 2012.
Deutsche Welle states that the law originally applied to non-governmental organizations that receive financial resources and donations from abroad. In December 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law expanding the legal definition of who can be considered a foreign agent.
From 2022, that qualification includes any individual or group that receives any amount of money from abroad – regardless of whether it is foreign governments, organizations or even citizens – and that publishes “print, audio, audio-visual or other reports and materials".
Laws on foreign agents modeled on that of the Russian Federation are in force or pending in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Hungary and Slovakia.
Georgia, a country of roughly three million people, has been hit by a political crisis this year over the adoption of a law on foreign agents, which requires organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as "agents of foreign influence."
Georgia's accession to the EU is blocked
The European Union (EU) ambassador to Georgia, Pavel Herchinski, said in July this year that Georgia's accession to the EU has been halted, and that part of the financial support to the country has been frozen after the Georgian authorities adopted a new law that is feared to limit democratic freedoms. .
He then said that the EU leaders made the decision to stop the process during the last European Council summit, and that it followed after the Georgian authorities adopted the law on "foreign influence" despite weeks of protests.
In addition, a total of 30 million euros of financial support, intended for the Ministry of Defense of Georgia in 2024, has been frozen, Herchinski said at a press conference, Radio Free Europe (RSE) reported in July.
"This is only the first step, and there will be others. Our direct support to the government of Georgia will be limited and we will try to redirect that support to civil society and the media. It is sad to see EU-Georgia relations at such a low point, when they could be at their peak." , Herčinski said then
The law, which took effect in June despite mass protests and a veto by the country's president, requires media, non-governmental organizations and other non-profit groups to register as "foreign agents" if they receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad.
The opposition has denounced the draft as a "Russian law" as Moscow uses a similar law to stigmatize independent media, organizations and individuals critical of the Kremlin, arguing that its adoption is a sign of Russian influence in Georgia.
EU officials have repeatedly condemned the law as undemocratic and said it would hinder Georgia's path to EU membership.
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