President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law on intelligence, and it comes into force on Oct. 24.
This law defines Ukraine’s intelligence bodies, the principles of their work and their social guarantees, and also determines how the government can control them. And it is one of the laws required by NATO to consider Ukraine’s membership in the alliance.
“Implementation of the provisions of this law will create an effective intelligence system in Ukraine that will correspond with the state and scale of the current threats to national security,” Zelensky said in his statement.
According to the law, there are now three intelligence bodies: the Foreign Intelligence Service and intelligence departments at the Defense Ministry and the Border Guard Service. Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, is now considered a counterintelligence agency and has been excluded from the list.
When drafting the law, lawmakers took into account the experience of regulating intelligence agencies in the European Union and NATO, according to the Facebook page of the Verkhovna Rada.
Mykhailo Samus, deputy head of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies think tank, told news website Liga.net that the law “doesn’t provide any major changes for the intelligence agencies,” but it creates a legislative base for them, which will “help them work more efficiently.”
However, human rights activists from the Institute of Mass Media and four other nonprofit organizations demanded Zelensky veto this bill: They claim it violates several provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine on access to information.
According to their statement on Sept. 24, the law didn’t receive any feedback from the parliamentary committees on public relations and anti-corruption policy.
“The law directly concerns issues of freedom of information, privacy and other rights and freedoms” and that’s why the committees were required to sign off on it, the statement reads.
The law on intelligence is one of five laws required from Ukraine for NATO to consider the country for membership in the military alliance, according to Olha Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for the European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.
Ukraine still needs to pass laws on parliamentary control over security and defense, on state secrets, as well as to amend the legislation on the SBU. The fifth required law on defense procurement was signed by the president in August.
