The European Commission will recommend that the EU’s member states open membership negotiations with Montenegro, according to diplomats. Montenegro gained candidate status last December but was told to shape up in fighting corruption and organised crime, to reform its judiciary and to undertake other reforms – seven in all – before accession talks could begin.

A core element of reform, a new electoral law, was adopted by parliament early in September after months of tough negotiations with opposition parties from the Serb minority. Adoption was made possible by a compromise over the education law, which ended a long quarrel over whether the language taught in schools should be called Montenegrin, Serbian or something else. Montenegro’s pupils will now study “Montenegrin-Serbian/ Bosnian/Croatian language”.

According to a census held in April, ethnic Montenegrins make up the largest group, with 45%, of the population of 625,000, but the biggest language group turned out to be Serbian-speakers, with 43%.

Anti-graft measures

Last Friday (30 September) in Brussels, Duško Markovic, Montenegro’s deputy prime minister in charge of anti-corruption efforts, presented the government’s measures for tackling graft. Neither the topic nor the timing appears coincidental: the government, under 35-year-old Prime Minister Igor Lukšic, grasps fully that corruption is the overriding concern of EU member states. Lukšic’s appointment at the end of last year is seen as positive by EU officials. His predecessor, Milo Djukanovic, had dominated Montenegro’s politics for two decades, and foreign diplomats were increasingly unnerved by his tendency to run the country as a business venture.

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