Montenegro Puts Secret Surveillance Under Top Judge

Montenegro’s parliament passed amendments to the Law on the National Security Agency (ANB) and the Law on Internal Affairs late on the evening of July 31, on the last day of a deadline the ruling majority and part of the opposition had written into an agreement signed on July 7. The vote was 63 in favour, with nobody against and no abstentions. Podgorica has now cleared the first item on a calendar that ends with constitutional change, and that calendar was drafted around demands from the country’s EU accession talks, the same framework Brussels uses to measure Serbia.

Approval moves to the president of the Supreme Court

The central change to the ANB law concerns who signs off on covert data collection. That decision now belongs to the president of the Supreme Court, case by case.

His approval is required for:

• handing over and directly accessing records of special categories of personal data
• processing genetic and biometric data
• profiling and measures that seriously intrude on privacy

An extension of surveillance is approved by the Supreme Court president or by the judge standing in for him. The law also requires that a measure be lifted the moment the grounds for it disappear, with the agency director notifying the Supreme Court president in writing. Oversight has been lifted to the top of the judiciary rather than left inside the service itself.

A sixth commission member from the prosecution

The changes to the Law on Internal Affairs expand the commission that vets security clearances from five members to six. The sixth is a state prosecutor or an employee of the State Prosecutor’s Office, nominated by the chief special prosecutor.

The government still forms the commission on the interior minister’s proposal, with an opinion from the parliamentary Committee on Security and Defence. Clearance vetting for police staff therefore gains, for the first time, a member drawn from the prosecution rather than from the ministry that runs the checks.

Why did these same laws fail once already?

Parliament first passed both laws on March 6, 2026. President Jakov Milatovic sent them back for a second vote, and parliament passed them again later that month.

The European Commission found that some provisions of those texts did not comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or with the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) on data protection in criminal matters. That finding formed part of the reasoning for returning the laws. The version adopted on July 31 answers those objections, which is why judicial approval of covert measures is spelled out in more detail than it was in March.

The July 7 agreement and the deadlines still ahead

The text of the Agreement on Overcoming the Parliamentary Crisis was published by Boris Mugosa, an MP from the opposition European Alliance. His comment that day was short:

Montenegro has won. Its citizens have won. Its European future has won.

The agreement fixes several dates. By July 31 the interior affairs and ANB amendments were to be passed and a working body on elections formed. All procedures around constitutional change are to be completed by September 4, 2026, while institutional mechanisms for monitoring election campaigns start applying in January 2027. The signatories also committed not to initiate unilateral changes to electoral legislation before the 2027 elections, and to back decisions that require a qualified majority.

The electoral package cleared two days earlier

On July 29 parliament passed amendments to the Law on the Election of Councillors and MPs, the Law on Financing Political Entities and Election Campaigns, the Judicial Council Act and the Law on the Election of the President of Montenegro.

Nikola Rakocevic, co-chair of the Committee on Comprehensive Electoral Reform, said the amendments were “based exclusively on the recommendations of the OSCE and ODIHR”. Vasilije Carapic, the committee’s other co-chair, described the outcome as a product of work by both the parliamentary majority and the opposition, reached in order to unblock processes tied to the European agenda. The new text also allows members of the State Election Commission to hold degrees in political science rather than law alone.

The security package was the easier half of the job. Constitutional amendments need a majority the government does not command on its own, so the real worth of the July agreement will only be measured on September 4. Until then Podgorica remains the one capital in the region that has turned accession deadlines into a written obligation towards its own opposition.