Serbia needs new Security Service Law

At the moment Serbia has three laws guverning security  services, which are not harmonized , there has been no reform of the Security services and control and supervision are not implemented in practice. Those are the main reasons for the adoption of new, umbrella law – it was underlined in the event of public presentation of Model Law on security services, that was organized by Belgrade Center for Security Policy (BCSP) on 22 September 2016 in the Media center.

{image4}Hadzic said that in previous years there were attempts to change laws, but there was no political will to do so. Although the existing security services, military and civilian sevicers are renamed, there was no essential reform.

In new law it was proposed that insted of the current three, there are two security services, Security Information Agency (BIA) and Military Intelligence and Security Agency (VOBA) the later of the two would be formed by joining together  the Military Security Agency (VBA) and Military Intelligence Agency (VOA). The operation of both security services would be regulated by one law.

Professor Milosavljevic said that the Model Law provided a way for establishing Technical and Operational center similar to one that exists in many Western European countries, which would determine measures for supervision of electronic comunications, telecommunications services, tehnical services for police and other services.

{image2}Former Director of VBA Svetko Kovac believes that the solutions of the proposed model is good, but in addition to this law should be adopted special law on security checks, which provides more controll over this activity.

Speaking about joining VBA and VOA, Kovac points out that this would improve function of the intelligence services, but that the process of joining is a very sensitive question.

„Analytics and logistics would be joined together, while the operation remains the same.There are many models by which the service could be merged,but for us the most acceptable is Croatian model,which integrates well many functions“, says Kovač.

Some of the solutions that Model Law provides are improvement of the provisions on matter of service such as security protection of institutions, people, buildings and premises of the importance of security, data exchange betwin relevant services.

Model Law provides a rule that during the election of directors of security services the opinion of the President of the Republic, the National Assembly of Serbia and the National Security Council is acknowledged, but that directors are elected on the basis of competence and not on political affiliation or loyality to the state leadership.

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After Belgrade Model Law will be presented in Niš, Novi Pazar and Novi Sad, and than it will be submitted to state authorities for consideration, so that potentially enter parliamentary procedure.

Organisation of the event is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgrade, in the framework of the project „LEGASI – Towards Legislative of Security Intelligence System“ and creation of Model law is supported by OSCE Mission to Serbia.

Report was translated by BCSP Intern Mirjana Arsic.