The bill on external intelligence and counterintelligence activities needs to be fundamentally examined in terms of its appropriateness. The recommendation was formulated by the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC) that appraised the draft law from the perspective of human rights and presented the results in a news conference at IPN.
One of the conclusions is that the informative note does not contain sufficient arguments as regards the necessity of the bill. The conditions that led to the drafting of the bill, the objectives pursued by it, the law’s place in the legal system and its economic-financial argumentation, given that its implementation implies costs, are not clearly defined.
“The bill needs to be essentially examined so as to determine its appropriateness, especially as regards the intelligence activities, the reasons for performing them, the method of asking for a security mandate. Furthermore, many of the bill’s provisions are problematic against the correlative norms from the legislation, non-compliance with the Constitution, the case law of the Constitutional Court and ECHR, the international standards,” said expert Mariana Kalughin.
She added that the draft law is not accompanied by the analysis of the regulation impact, but some of the promoted norms refer to entrepreneurial activity. The private entities are obliged to fulfill a number of obligations, including to comply with particular requirements of the Security and Intelligence Service.
According to the experts, if the bill is adopted, there will be created parallel mechanisms for authorizing measures that, in essence, are special investigation measures and should be covered by the regime set by the special law. This is dangerous as the possible confusion will significantly diminish the predictability of the law.
The appraisal was carried out within the project “Harmonization of the legislation with the international human rights standards” that is supported financially by the Civil Rights Defenders of Sweden.
The bill was drafted by a lawmaker.