A representative of the NGO Mladiinfo Montenegro (m!M) attended a round table on “Protection of whistleblowers in Montenegro and the countries of the region”, organized by the Center for Development of Non-Governmental Organizations (CRNVO), which was held at the CentreVille Hotel on September 25, 2020, in Podgorica.
In the introductory part, the participants were first addressed by: Ana Novakovic – Executive Director of the CRNVO, a representative of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Jelena Perovic – Director of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption.
The second part of the panel discussion was reserved for regional practice in law enforcement. On this topic, those present had the opportunity to listen to representatives from Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The common position of all three parties was that the position of whistleblowers and their legal security still needed to be significantly improved. The biggest focus was on the law which postpones the harmful effect on whistleblowers until the end of the court procedure. Unlike Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have three levels of alert that a whistleblower can use (internal alerting, external alerting and public alerting), in Montenegro there are only two, ie. the possibility of alarming the public with the whistleblower having full legal protection has been omitted.
The third and final part of the panel discussion presented the experiences of the whistleblowers themselves and their path through the entire process after the announcement and presentation of the observed abuses. Attendees could hear various experiences by Tomislav Veljkovic from Serbia, Emir Mesic from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Aleksandar Brajovic from Montenegro.