The European Commission (EC) is concerned about the potential adoption of amendments to the Law on Confiscation of Property Acquired by Criminal Activity because its recommendations have been ignored, EC spokeswoman Ana Pisonero has told Pobjeda, ahead of the control hearing in the home parliamentary committee and the Parliament session scheduled for Friday.
The Committee for the Political System, Judiciary and Administration unanimously decided a few days ago to organize a consultative hearing today regarding the text of the legal act, which the Government representatives populistically call the “anti-mafia” law.
The committee chair, Democrats’ MP Momo Koprivica, proposed at the session on Monday that the Minister of Justice Marko Kovac, representatives of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office, the Protector of Property and Legal Interests and the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, as well as the MANS CEO Vanja Calovic Markovic, as well as Valentina Pavlicic and the representatives of the Association of Lawyers and Human Rights Action attend the consultative hearing.
In her statement to Pobjeda, Pisonero has recalled that in accordance with the Montenegrin good practice of consulting on important draft laws, on 9 December, the EC gave the latest guidelines on the draft Law on Amendments and Changes to the Law on Confiscation of Property Gains from Criminal Actions.
With this, she once again confirmed that the Ministry of Justice, as well as Minister Kovac, deliberately misled the public, because they then claimed that “the letter that appeared in the media regarding the proposed law does not represent the EC’s opinion”.
