Watching the Watchers: Towards Accountable Intelligence Services in the Western Balkans

In all three partners’ countries – North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia – intelligence services are still instrumentalised by the ruling political elites and used as a tool to remain in power and silence the opposition. The reform of national intelligence services remains a blind spot of all reform efforts. Due to the anti-democratic potential of intelligence services, the overall objective of the project is to contribute to prevention and/or reversing the trends of state capture through advocating for the substantial reforms that would promote integrity and accountability of the intelligence sector. The specific policy objective of the project is to identify the blind spots within EU accession process when it comes to the work of intelligence agencies and devise benchmarks for this area.

These objectives will be achieved through in-depth research on the national intelligence systems in three countries with the added value of a comparative, regional perspective that aims to identify common challenges and propose solutions on how to address them. The project envisages publication of three national reports and one regional policy brief that will employ the comparative approach and develop common benchmarks. These policy products will be used as a basis for sustained advocacy efforts of three partner organisations with the overall goal to streamline the proposed benchmarks into the EU’s enlargement policy.

Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) realises this project in partnership with Institute Alternative (IA) from Podgorica, Montenegro, and Eurothink – Centre for European Strategies (EUROTHINK) from Skopje, North Macedonia. The project is financially supported by European Fund for the Balkans within the regional program Think and Link.