almanac on security sector oversight in the Western Balkans

Albania
become a common trend (Freedom House, 2003). In a few cases, efforts to conduct
investigative journalism by independent media outlets have been silenced by the government
through the use of financial pressure on media owners.
6 . Control and oversight of intelligence services
This section analyses oversight of the intelligence and security services. It does so by
examining the two main services – the State Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Military
Intelligence Service (MIS) 25 – and the authorities having control and oversight competences.
These authorities are the executive branch, parliament, independent state
institutions and the judiciary.
6.1. Background
Making intelligence services accountable to democratically elected bodies was one of
the first issues addressed in the early days of transition. 26 This concern stemmed from
the fear the intelligence services might become an obstacle to democratisation. Once
this concern withered, intelligence oversight was not pursued with the same diligence.
Further developments of the intelligence oversight system have mainly resulted from
various internal political crises and power games of different actors within the system,
or due to the influence of external factors, mainly EU and NATO integration. Despite
the rather chaotic development of reforms during the last twenty years, one positive
achievement is an oversight system which can serve as a basis for further reforms.
6.2. Executive control and oversight
The main executive authorities involved in the control of intelligence services are the
president, prime minister and Minister of Defence (see Table 4). Formally, the executive
has established full control over intelligence services, both political and financial
or administrative. Effectiveness of control, however, varies depending on the legal
framework and the administrative position of each of the two services. 27 The SIS and
the MIS perform nearly the same task but two rather different forms of executive
control have emerged. 28
25 Although the intelligence community comprises other services also, the reason for analysing only
the SIS and the MIS is because they are the larger and more established services and the only ones that
perform both foreign and domestic intelligence activities.
26 The communist era intelligence apparatus was disbanded and intelligence services were regulated
by law as early as July 1991, nearly three months after the first multiparty elections.
27 The SIS is an autonomous agency which depends administratively upon the prime minister, though
the MIS depends administratively upon the Minister of Defence.
28 As it will be seen later on, these different executive control regimes also affect the effectiveness of
other oversight bodies.
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Almanac on Security Sector Oversight in the Western Balkans