Committee chairman Ivan Jarnjak informed reporters about the Committee's findings after a session that was held behind closed doors. He said that the Security-Intelligence Agency (SOA) had acted in line with the law when it vetted candidates for the Council, but that human rights were violated because the government's Office for NGOs, which ordered the vetting, had not previously sought the candidates' consent.
Documents collected during the investigation will be sent to the presidents of the state, government and parliament, as well as to the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor for further action, Jarnjak said.
The Committee recommends that the existing, outdated regulation on vetting should not be applied and that background checks should be suspended until a new regulation is adopted.
The head of the Office of the Council for National Security, Ladislav Pivcevic, said that a new regulation, adjusted to the Law on the Security-Intelligence System, had already been drawn up and that it would be discussed by the government next week.
Jarnjak added that a draft law on background checks would soon be sent to parliament.
Pivcevic reported that disciplinary proceedings had been initiated against the SOA agent who ran background checks on candidates for the Council for the Development of Civil Society.
He is charged with having vetted candidates by telephone, thus breaching rules of his service, under which agents must identify themselves with their official identity card.
The Committee's conclusions were opposed by Social Democrat Sime Lucin and Party of Rights member Pero Kovacevic.
Lucin said that the SOA should not have vetted candidates for the Council, while Kovacevic believes that all background checks made after September 17 last year were unlawful because the government should have adopted a new regulation on background checks by that date.
Lucin also had reservations towards the conclusion that the three MPs had not been under surveillance, because the Committee did not accept his proposal that the Ministry of the Interior and the SOA be obligated by the same conclusion to determine who collected information on the MPs' private life.
The news conference held after the Committee session was also attended by several human rights activists, who said that they would sue the SOA and were ready to go all the way to the European Court of Justice to protect their rights.
They objected that state institutions were repeatedly citing procedural mistakes, although Pivcevic said today that relavant laws had been violated during the vetting procedure.
Human rights activists also wondered why the Committee would send its findings to the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor if it believed that relevant laws had not been violated.