Independence of National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs) FDJP’s scope of responsibility. The NCPT commissioned a legal opinion for further clarifications concerning both the issue of financial independence and that of whether its position in the administrative hierarchy, based on the nature of the NCPT’s activities, adequately takes into account the requirement of functional independence, as defined in international law.28 In the following, we will discuss the conclusions set forth in that legal opinion. In this chapter we discuss the significance of the principle of independence as a prerequisite for the effective functioning of NPMs and address the question as to the legal and institutional conditions that must be fulfilled under the prescriptions of international law in order to best ensure the effectiveness of the NPMs at the national level. 4.2 Legal bases a. International law Upon ratifying the OPCAT, each State Party is obliged to establish, one or more national preventive mechanisms for the prevention of torture at the national level within one year. State Parties have no further obligations with regard to the model of the preventive mechanisms, or to the legal or institutional conditions that must be fulfilled in order to ensure conformity with the principle of independence. The OPCAT merely states in Article 18 that the States Party must guarantee “the functional independence of the national preventive mechanisms as well as the independence of their personnel” (para. 1), and that they must “undertake to make available the necessary resources for the functioning of the national preventive mechanisms” (para. 3). In doing so, States Parties are called upon to give Prof. em. Walter Kälin (University of Bern), Prof. Manfred Nowak (University of Vienna), Legal Aspects of the Independence of the National Commission on the Prevention of Torture (NCPT). Legal Opinion to the Attention of the NCPT, 31 July 2017. 28 Activity Report NCPT 2017 33