Independence of National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs) Within the framework of the overall budget allocated to it, the Commission has only a limited degree of flexibility for its operational expenses. This compelled the Commission to strictly prioritise its activities, which limited its ability to effectively perform the statutory tasks with which it is charged. As a result, in recent years the Commission was able to carry out only an average of 15 inspection visits to detention facilities annually, which is far below the objective set forth in the Federal Council Dispatch prior to the establishment of the NCPT.78 It is true that the Commission was granted additional resources in recent years for the performance of additional monitoring tasks in connection with forced removals by air and the federal asylum centres. Its capacities nevertheless remain extremely limited with only 3.3 full-time positions, for 1.3 of which the funding is subject to a temporal limit. In view of the fact that there exist an estimated 700 detention facilities that would, in principle, fall within the scope of the NCPT’s mandate, the resources available to the Commission are quite simply insufficient if it is to perform all of the tasks assigned to it by law. From the perspective of the OPCAT, it may be noted that the financial autonomy of the NCPT, given manner in which it is attached to the Federal Administration, is clearly limited, thereby reducing the latitude available to it for performance of its activities. In the view of the authors of the legal opinion that was commissioned, the independence of the NCPT is seriously impaired through its administrative attachment to the FDJP-GS79 so that insufficient consideration is given to the prescriptions of international law. Cf. Kälin/Nowak, p. 14. 78 Kälin/Nowak, p. 14. 79 44 Activity Report NCPT 2017