Human Rights Action (HRA) welcomes the decision of the Constitutional Court to initiate the procedure on HRA’s initiative to review the constitutionality of provisions of the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament of Montenegro, which added a third round of voting for the Supreme State Prosecutor (SSP), contrary to the Constitution, and to suspend the election of the SSP under the disputed provisions of the Rules of Procedure. It remains unclear why the Constitutional Court did not react earlier and prevent the Parliament from executing the third round of voting for the SSP on April 14, although HRA submitted the initiative on 28 March.

It is encouraging that the Constitutional Court stated in its preliminary decision that the Parliament “exceeded its powers” and “prescribed the ‘third’ and ‘forth’ rounds of voting for the SSP with disputed provisions of Article 178 para. 6 and 7 of the Rules of Procedure, contrary to the Constitution.

We expect the Constitutional Court to adopt the final decision on this initiative in the shortest possible time period and thus enable the election of the SSP in a constitutional manner.

The final decision of the Constitutional Court will be extremely important for the protection of the principle of constitutionality which prescribes that constitutional provision cannot be changed by laws of lower legal force.

Decision of the Constitutional Court (in Montenegrin)