Montenegro Amends Constitution, Serbian Language Left Out
Lawmakers in Podgorica passed amendments on the judiciary and the central bank with 68 votes and none against, while a proposal to make Serbian an official language failed to pass.
On August 24, at a special session, the Montenegrin parliament passed constitutional amendments that change the makeup of the Judicial Council and the Prosecutorial Council and introduce statutory regulation of the Central Bank of Montenegro. For Belgrade the decision carries a double weight. It bears directly on the standing of the Serbian people in the neighboring country, since a proposal to give Serbian the status of an official language failed to pass, and it indirectly speeds up Montenegro’s path toward the European Union, which Podgorica now ties to a deadline of the end of this year.
Serbian outlets had reported earlier that lawmakers were only just heading into the debate on the judiciary and the central bank. The vote is now over, and it was unanimous among those who took part: 68 lawmakers voted for the amendments, none against and none abstaining. The session was called by parliament speaker Andrija Mandic at the request of lawmakers from the parliamentary majority. Fifty six lawmakers were in the chamber when the session opened, and that number had risen to 68 by the time of the vote. The only party that did not take part in the vote was the Democratic People’s Party (DNP), led by Milan Knezevic. The constitutional law implementing the amendments passed by the same margin.
Mandic explained the timing of the session by noting that no other parliament in Europe was sitting on August 24.
“If someone told most lawmakers in Europe that they had to show up in parliament on August 24, they would hardly respond. Some friends of mine from European parliaments say a speaker who scheduled a session like that would come off very badly. But our obligations are what they are, we know what citizens expect, and we gathered here to show that we are responsible people,” Mandic said.
The amendments, numbered 17 through 21, change how judges of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme State Prosecutor and members of the two councils are elected, requiring a two thirds majority in parliament followed by a three fifths majority. Sources differ on the exact makeup of the new bodies. B92 reports that the Judicial Council will have nine members, including four distinguished lawyers chosen by parliament, while Tanjug assigns that same power, electing four distinguished lawyers, to the Prosecutorial Council, and adds that the number of judges on the Judicial Council rises from four to five and that the justice minister will no longer sit on it. Amendment 21 regulates the independence of the Central Bank, which reports on its work to parliament while being run by a council headed by the governor.
The sharpest assessment in the debate came from Danijel Zivkovic, leader of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), who announced his party’s support for the amendments despite reservations.
“The judiciary is neither self-governing nor independent. It is a club in the hands of the majority,” Zivkovic said during the parliamentary debate, adding that the changes hand the judiciary enormous power, but that the DPS is voting for them for the sake of European integration.
For Serbia, the most sensitive part of the outcome was what stayed out of the amendments’ text. DNP leader Milan Knezevic said that including Serbian among the official languages had been his party’s condition, and that Prime Minister Milojko Spajic had rejected it. As a result, Knezevic said, the DNP decided not to take part in an act that does not recognize equal standing for the Serbian language alongside Montenegrin. Boris Mugosa, head of the opposition European Alliance, backed the amendments but criticized the parliamentary majority for keeping the changes out of the parliamentary procedure from February to June, meaning the vote was now happening, in his words, without a proper public debate.
The deadline for passing the amendments was tied to closing negotiating Chapter 23, which covers the judiciary and fundamental rights, and Chapter 17, on economic and monetary union. Podgorica is aiming to close every negotiating chapter by the end of the year and to join the European Union in 2028, which would make Montenegro the first former Yugoslav country to overtake Serbia in this round of enlargement. Whether that deadline holds, and whether the question of the Serbian language comes back onto the agenda before all the chapters are finally closed, remains open ahead of the next sessions in Podgorica.
