The European Union has clearly promised that it will carefully monitor the implementation of the disputed laws on the Police and the National Security Agency. After yesterday’s threats by Minister Dragan Krapović addressed to fellow MP Nikola, I believe that there is another serious reason to take that promise extremely seriously,” said European Union official Miloš Đuričković.
He pointed out on social networks that they warned that the biggest problem with these laws is not only what is written in them, but who will apply them and how.
“When a government minister publicly tells an opposition deputy that his department and his party colleague’s department will be put in charge of dealing with the deputy, such words cannot be seen as ordinary political nervousness. They take on a completely different weight when they come from a representative of the government that has just provided additional, almost unlimited and uncontrolled, powers to the Police and ANB,” Đuričković warned.
Therefore, as he adds, the European Union should not only monitor the formal application of laws, but also the political context in which they are implemented.
“Exactly statements like these show why we warned that strong mechanisms of control and protection against possible abuse of the state apparatus are necessary. If this kind of rhetoric and approach becomes normalized, then we are no longer talking about a bad political culture, but about the creation of an environment in which security institutions become a means of political pressure. This is not a European standard. This is not democracy,” he said.
That is why, he says, he expects the European Commission and all our international partners to observe this case precisely through the prism of the application of new laws.
“Because European values are not only defended by the adoption of regulations, but by the way the government treats its political dissidents. Yesterday we heard more than just a threat to one opposition MP. Yesterday we got more reason to be concerned about how the laws that the government convinced us were fully in line with European and democratic standards are being applied. This is an issue that today goes beyond daily politics and concerns the future of democracy in Montenegro,” Đuričković concluded.
