National Security Agency will protect the constitutional order of the Republic of North Macedonia. The deadline for the start of the work of this government agency, as Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski told Thursday reporters, will be June 1, 2019. The security reforms in the Ministry of Interior are being implemented in cooperation with 4 partner countries, and the new agency will be tasked with monitoring.

Monitoring is prevention, but it will have no probative value, and the decision for such a step is made because of the awareness of the past abuses of monitoring and wiretapping. Minister Spasovski added that those times are over and the new Law on the National Security Agency, which is in the parliamentary procedure, will protect the citizens.

The establishment of this type of government body, according to the MoI leadership, aims to reduce the concentration of power that will be smaller if it is outside the MoI. After 28 years, we want to get rid of the name “secret police”. None of the government agencies will have the opportunity to monitor, and there will not be only one agency that will monitor everyone and have all the information, as it was until now, said Minister Spasovski.

The agency’s director will be appointed by the Government and proposed by the Prime Minister, and the Selection Commission will be tasked with creating job profiles, and employee profiles.

The final selection will have to meet the NATO criteria, and Minister Spasovski is certain that anyone who does not meet the criteria will not be able to be employed in the agency because the employees will be people who will have contact with classified data.