The police must be independent from the Ministry of the Interior. Even if they remain part of the Ministry, the police should be managed by a director general, not the minister. The recommendation was formulated by Andrej Rupnik, Slovenian expert who was invited to Chisinau by the parliamentary commission on national security, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The minister of the interior should deal with the political part of this institution and ensure the necessary resources, while the police should be headed by a professional, as in Slovenia. But we worked a lot in order to succeed. Initially, the lawmakers as well as the police opposed the idea,” the expert said in a roundtable meeting. Andrej Rupnik said that in his country some of the MPs proposed that the police should be autonomous, while the financial resources should be managed by the minister of the interior. “What kind of independence would it be if the police had to permanently go to the minister and ask for money? We understood that if we want to have an independent country, the police should be free from politics,” said the expert. A number of police bodies were merged into one in Slovenia. “Slovenia is a small country with a population of 2 million. We cannot afford maintaining too many institutions. Thus, we have only one school that prepares police officers. I recommend Moldova to analyze which of the security and defense services can be merged so as to avoid additional expenses,” said Andrej Rupnik. He stressed that every foreign model should be adjusted to the own necessities before implemented. “An international model cannot be copied exactly. All the circumstances and typical features of society should be taken into account. One thing is for sure – the police must act for the people’s benefit,” said the Slovenian expert. According to Andrej Rupnik, the first step that must be taken is to adopt clear legislation that would describe in detail all the powers of the police and the methods and instruments that they can use. The parliamentary commission on national security, defense and public order organized the roundtable meeting in partnership with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and the Public Policy Institute. Its objective was to identify the relevant reformation practices and examples of Slovenia that can be implemented for reforming the Ministry of the Interior of Moldova.