• Until November 2023, Montenegro was ruled by Abazović’s outgoing government, despite it losing a vote of no confidence in August 2022 amidst the prolonged constitutional crisis. In late February, under pressure from the EU, which threatened to block Montenegro’s accession negotiations, MPs agreed on appointing three Constitutional Court judges, ending a stalemate in this important institution that had lasted since September 2022.
• Before being ousted from the presidency in the second round of presidential elections in April, the longtime leader Đukanović of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) decided to call for the parliament to be dissolved, although he did not specify the legal grounds for the decision (see Electoral Process).1 In March, Đukanović called early parliamentary elections for June 11th. Despite the weak legitimacy of the interim government, there was a flurry of legislative activity between March and June, with Parliament voting on a total of 21 laws over a period of two months.2 However, none were enacted, as both President Đukanović and his successor Milatović, who was inaugurated as president in May, refused to sign them.3
• In March, the government submitted draft amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information to the parliament, which were criticized by some nongovernmental organizations (NGO)s as potentially paving the way for misuse that could prevent the disclosure of information of public interest.4 The draft amendments envisaged exemptions for data pertaining to the work of the security and intelligence sectors, and relieved former public officials from scrutiny of their income and property. These amendments were ultimately not adopted, but reform promoting openness and transparency in the public sector remains an urgent priority, as both civil society and the European Commission urge the government to eliminate unjustified restrictions on access to information.
• As of the end of 2023, the Law on Government still has not begun working its way through Parliament. As a result, in the wake of the formation of the new government, streamlined rules governing the handover of duties and the structure and organization of work, as well as the relations between the government with other institutions, were still missing.
• In late June, the Constitutional Court annulled some amendments to the Law on the President of Montenegro, namely ones passed in 2022 which infringed upon the president’s sole authority to nominate the prime minister–designate by allowing Parliament to do so if the president failed to act.5 The court decision also annulled provisions which obliged the president to nominate ambassadors.
• At the very end of the 90-day constitutional deadline following his nomination as prime minister, Spajić managed to form the 44th government of Montenegro. PES is leading a government of unlikely partners, with endorsements from a total of 11 other political subjects including Democratic Montenegro (commonly known as the Democrats), the Socialists People’s Party of Montenegro (SNP), Citizens’ Union “CIVIS,” two coalitions of parties representing the interests of the Albanian community in the country, and two former members of the Democratic Front: NOVA and the Democratic People’s Party (DNP). Although NOVA and the DNP had not yet assumed ministerial positions in Spajić’s cabinet as of the end of 2023, the agreement on forming the new government anticipated a reshuffle that would bring in both parties by the end of 2024. Opponents criticized the composition of the new government due to the controversies surrounding the former Democratic Front, including allegations of illegal financing from Russia and open and very close ties to the Serbian regime and especially Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić. Due to NOVA and the DNP not being considered to be aligned with the country’s EU path and NATO membership commitments, delaying their inclusion in the cabinet was largely seen as a compromise, especially following the lengthy negotiations during which Spajić’s prospects of forming a stable government were frequently questioned since even three MPs from his own electoral list were not supporting him. NOVA leader Mandić was appointed as president of the Parliament.
• The new government includes five vice presidents—a position equivalent to deputy prime minister in Montenegro—two of whom also held ministerial positions, and 17 other ministers. The government’s composition triggered yet another reorganization of administration, as the scope of some ministries has changed.6 Despite a relatively large number of positions, the government included only four female ministers, none of which occupied the higher-ranking posts of vice presidents.7
• The census remained a contested issue at the end of the year. Based on a law adopted in mid-2022, the government scheduled the census for the first half of November. However, opposition parties and some CSOs urged the government to ensure the transparency and oversight of the process, which they argued was not up to par. Several parties, including the DPS, launched a campaign to boycott the census based on longstanding ethnic identity concerns. Spajić, upon resuming office, made several concessions and delayed the start of the census until December 3. Claiming that their conditions were met, the DPS and its partners decided to participate in the census.

• Local elections took place in the municipality of Tuzi in March, two rounds of presidential elections took place in March and April, and parliamentary elections were held in June 2023. Additionally, several unsuccessful attempts to finalize elections in the municipality of Šavnik were made throughout the year.
• There was no progress in the reform of electoral legislation and implementation of recommendations by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) regarding voter registries, the financing of political entities and electoral campaigns, residence registers, and the code of election campaign ethics. The mandate of the parliamentary Committee for Comprehensive Electoral Reform expired in mid-2022, and the committee did not meet in 2023.8 The only major development occurred regarding the so-called Envelope Affair, an alleged electoral fraud case dating to 2016, when the Higher Court confirmed the indictment against the former mayor of the national capital of Podgorica, Slavoljub Stijepović, in August 2023.
• Local elections in the municipality of Šavnik could not be conducted in 2023 despite nine rounds of attempts since October 2022. Each time, the elections were interrupted by representatives of the former Democratic Front preventing some citizens from voting based on changes in residency, with the aim of boosting their electoral chances. Data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs shows that in the period of five months before the elections, 337 persons moved to Šavnik, which is a considerable percentage of the total of about 1,900 people registered to vote in this small municipality. The circumstances leading to this shift in population have not been thoroughly investigated, while legal safeguards against abuse of residency changes are lacking. Prosecutors have initiated proceedings against several people for obstructing voting,9 but no solution for conducting elections has yet been found.10
• Presidential elections took place in two rounds, on March 19, 2023, and April 2, 2023. The ODIHR deployed an international election observation mission that concluded the elections were “competitive and adequately managed, and fundamental freedoms were respected in the campaign. The legal framework has numerous gaps and ambiguities that undermine its effectiveness.” The mission also cited the politicization of the work of the State Election Commission, which was largely made up of loyalists of the Democratic Front and of the DPS, as a key challenge.11 Spajić, who was running for president as the PES candidate, was denied candidate registration by the DIK because it emerged that he held dual citizenship in Serbia and had a residence there, despite him having submitted the documentation required by law. Spajić filed a lawsuit against the Commission for violating his rights and discriminating against him, but PES had to put forward a new presidential candidate. The DIK’s move has been criticized as being selective, as other candidates, especially Mandić, who previously stated openly that he had obtained Serbian citizenship, have not been placed under the same level of scrutiny.12
• Abuse of public resources was evident during the campaign for the parliamentary elections held in June 2023, particularly when it came to handing out public sector jobs to curry favor. Bans on the use of government resources in the campaign can be easily circumvented due to legislative gaps, and numerous public employment contracts were issued during the campaign.13 From November 2021 to November 2023, the number of public employees increased by 2.8 percent at the level of the central government, and by 11 percent at the local level, according to Ministry of Finance data.14 Payments for work contracts cost the state over €17 million ($18.7) in 2023, an all-time record.15 Nonetheless, the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM), which consisted of the ODIHR mission and delegations from the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, concluded in a statement of preliminary findings that Montenegro’s parliamentary elections “were competitive and well-run despite taking place in a context of a protracted institutional and constitutional crisis.”16

• During 2023, no major changes in the legal and strategic frameworks regulating the environment for civil society have been introduced. On the other hand, ministries were again late to implement competitions for NGOs to obtain funding in a timely and efficient manner, demonstrating their continuous lack of capacity to abide by legal requirements. In August, the media reported that the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare had continued to grant funds for several years in a row to a NGO whose leader had been convicted of a violent crime.17 This case demonstrated the lack of proper safeguards in licensing NGOs to provide social services, and in granting public funds to NGO projects.
• Outgoing prime minister Abazović and his minister of the interior, Filip Adžić, have frequently criticized civil society’s work. Abazović alleged in a July op-ed that the mafia in Montenegro is protected by, among others, some NGOs, though he did not name the supposedly offending organizations or substantiate his claims.18 Adžić said on a TV talk show in April that “nongovernmental organizations are undermining institutions with an aim of receiving grants.”19 In sum, the top state officials have attempted to portray some NGOs as grant-seeking opportunists with such statements, negatively affecting the overall environment for civil society and trust between government and NGOs.
• Protests by various trade unions and sporadic concessions by the government continued throughout 2023. In late December, the union representing education workers organized a protest, dissatisfied with the decision of the new government not to increase their salaries despite commitments in their contract that they would receive raises if macroeconomic conditions and public expenditure limits allowed.20 Montenegro also saw political protests, such as one opposing the decision to appoint Mandić as president of Parliament in late October and another demanding the boycott of the census.
• On October 21, the LGBT+ Pride parade took place in Podgorica, again in a peaceful atmosphere with no reported incidents, and with attendance by officials from Spajić’s government, the president’s office, the Podgorica city government, political parties, civil society, and the diplomatic community.21
• In October, local authorities in Budva ordered the removal of a public exhibition about political prisoners in Russia, entitled “Faces of the Russian Resistance,” from one of the town’s central locations, without legal grounds and despite the fact that the organizers followed procedure in notifying the police about the planned event beforehand.22 This case stood out as a breach of freedom of assembly, which is otherwise widely respected and practiced.
• The Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) continued to play a significant role in political life, with its patriarch and clergy commenting on the country’s social and political events. In the wake of the census, for example, Patriarch Porfirije called on citizens gathered at a ceremony in Podgorica to identify themselves as members of the Serbian people and believers in the SOC who speak the Serbian language. This move was criticized as direct interference in the census campaign, which in Montenegro bears special significance due to the country’s multiethnic population and ongoing identity disputes.23

• Montenegro’s government adopted the country’s first Media Strategy in October following a drawn-out process. The strategy pledged to improve gender-sensitive reporting, fight disinformation, support media literacy, strengthen the independence of public broadcasters, improve the socioeconomic position of journalists, and increase fair competition in the media market.24 Still, with the adoption of key media laws still pending, 2023 did not see any tangible results from media reforms. In general, Montenegro’s media scene remained overly polarized, and no progress was made in enhancing media self-regulation to transcend the divisions within the media community.
• In May, the Higher Court issued a final decision confirming that the 2021 appointment of Boris Raonić, the general director of the national public broadcaster RTCG, had been illegal due to shortcomings in the evaluation of candidates’ eligibility during the selection process, especially regarding flimsy reasons given for rejecting some of his competitors.25 Despite the court’s decision, the Council of RTCG reappointed Raonic in June, drawing harsh criticism from civil society,26 as well as from Maja Camović Veličković, a Council member from the media community. Camović Veličković also criticized the Council for poor oversight and an overly generous executive salary policy, which included performance-based pay for the general director despite lacking detailed insight into his effectiveness.27
• In December, the council of the local public broadcaster in Podgorica appointed a new acting director, in a majority vote taken in a closed session. The Montenegrin NGOs Media Center and the Centre for Civic Education criticized the appointment for a lack of transparency, as well as the acting director’s eligibility and the broadcaster’s hiring procedure itself.28
• Dragana Šćepanović, a journalist at the daily newspaper Vijesti, has been subjected to a prolonged smear campaign throughout the year by the online portal Aktuelno, owned by Zoran Ćoćo Bećirović, a controversial businessman and owner of a ski resort in the town of Kolašin. Along with articles targeting the journalist, the portal launched a petition against her reporting for allegedly driving away investors, and she received suggestions from several people that she should stop writing about controversial topics, which she interpreted as threats.29 Prosecutors at first did not consider the efforts against Šćepanović to be of a criminal nature, but in October they took a statement from Bećirović.30 In the meantime, the journalist also contacted the police about her security.
• According to data from the SafeJournalist Network, a regional network of journalists’ associations and unions, there were a total of 16 verbal and online threats against journalists in 2023, including death threats to journalists Nikola Milosavić Aleksić, Danica Nikolić, and Zoran Leković.31 There was also one reported sexual harassment case that was prosecuted by Montenegrin authorities.32 An investigation into the 2004 murder of Duško Jovanović, editor in chief of the opposition newspaper Dan, is still ongoing. In July, the Montenegrin government asked the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to assist in the investigation of the case and received a positive reply, but there have been no breakthroughs in the case.
• Also in October, the Higher Prosecution Office requested the launching of misdemeanor proceedings against Boban Batrićević, an activist and professor, over a column in which he criticized hateful narratives he said had been spread by the Serbian Orthodox Church and some of its priests. The prosecution, in its decision, cited provisions of the Law on Public Order and Peace, which bans insults based on national, racial, or religious affiliation.33 The decision was seen as a breach of freedom of speech and as arbitrarily selective, especially in the context of the hate speech constantly evident in online media and on social networks. In response, 22 NGOs made an appeal to the Supreme State Prosecution in late December to examine the decision of the prosecutor who ordered the misdemeanor proceedings, arguing that the case signifies the practical return of the crime of “verbal delict” to Montenegro and thus threatens freedom of expression inappropriately, especially in a country that is a member of the Council of Europe and that aspires to become a member of the European Union.34 The trial had not begun as of the end of 2023.

• In the small northern municipality of Andrijevica, for most of 2023, the sessions of the local assembly have been disrupted in order to prevent a vote of confidence on the current municipal president, or mayor, Željko Ćulafić of the SNP. Local assembly members belonging to DPS, along with one from the former DF, have been asking for Ćulafić’s dismissal since mid-2023, but a group of citizens, allegedly supporters of the local SNP, has been physically preventing sessions with this confidence vote on the agenda from taking place, thereby blocking the assembly’s work. Ćulafić had allegedly aided the citizens in delaying the vote on his dismissal, although he denied involvement.35 Among other results of the disruptions, the municipality’s budget for 2024 had not been adopted by the end of 2023.
• In the newest Montenegrin municipality, Zeta, the year was marked by the local ruling coalition breaking up, the municipal administration attempting to take actions outside the remit of local-level decision-making, and delays demarcating Zeta’s border with Podgorica (from which it was separated on dubious grounds in 2022). The president of the municipal assembly, Luka Krstović of Democratic Montenegro was dismissed in August by a majority vote in the municipal assembly, thus breaking up the coalition between the Democrats and For the Future of Zeta—an alliance of parties associated with the former DF—that had held hitherto held power. For the Future of Zeta legislators had proposed that the assembly adopt a declaration annulling Zeta’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence on the municipality’s territory, an issue outside of Montenegrin municipalities’ authority. Claiming that Krstović has breached regulations by scheduling the assembly session with this point of the agenda late, coalition legislators had called for his dismissal. Krstović has complained to the Administrative Court, claiming that his dismissal had breached legal procedures.36
• In Budva, the president of the municipality, Milo Božović, was arrested in April on the orders of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for alleged involvement in drug trafficking and the creation of a criminal organization. Božović has remained in prison awaiting trial since then, while still maintaining his position as the president of the municipality and signing official documents from prison, since he had not named a vice president. Božović is a high-ranking NOVA official, and his arrest contributed to turbulence within the coalition that holds power in the Budva assembly. Running the municipality from prison caused numerous issues, such as irregularity in payments and the stalling of municipal activities like planning processes and capital projects.
• In the small northern municipality of Šavnik, the local governing coalition of the DPS and the Social Democrats (SD) has remained in power since 2018. Local elections have been attempted numerous times since October 2022 without success: each of the nine tries has been interrupted by incidents including physical attacks, the breaking of ballot boxes, and other obstructions to voting. The police administration, in cooperation with the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Pljevlja, has filed criminal charges against 36 people on suspicion of falsely reporting residences in Šavnik, as well as against a Ministry of Municipal Affairs official for falsifying official documents in connection with those reports.37
• In February, the Ministry of Public Administration formed a working group to analyze the prospects for local self-government and create a roadmap for decentralizing state functions to the municipalities.38 Decentralization has been the priority of the ministry, which, even before the working group’s findings have come in, claimed that Montenegro needs a thorough decentralization.39 This idea continued into the new government as well, as Spajić is a proponent of decentralization and kept on Marash Dukaj as the minister of public administration. In the meantime, municipalities have increased the number of local government employees by almost 1,000 in a year’s time,40 with expenses for salaries growing as well. Municipalities’ debt is also rising, and they rely on direct revenues from the central government to remain solvent.

• Due to Parliament remaining at a standstill for most of the year, Montenegro did not move forward with comprehensive judicial reform. The Constitutional Court regained quorum to perform its work in late February, but, due to an even number of judges, it faced difficulties rendering judgements. Only in late November, when the new Parliament agreed on appointing the seventh missing judge, was the Court’s full complement and functionality restored.41
• In late December, Parliament appointed three so-called “reputable lawyers” to serve on the Judicial Council, after almost five-and-a-half years of unsuccessful attempts to achieve the necessary qualified parliamentary majority. The newly appointed members will replace three of their predecessors, whose mandate expired in mid-2018 but was prolonged upon recommendation of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission (officially the European Commission for Democracy through Law) in order to keep the Judicial Council functioning.42
• The Prosecutorial Council illegally appointed a new acting supreme state prosecutor from among its members after the mandate of the previous acting appointee expired in February.43 Representatives of civil society, the Ministry of Justice, and the European Commission opposed the decision. Nevertheless, the same dubiously appointed prosecutor was reappointed in August for another six-month term in an acting capacity.
• In March, the outgoing government led by Abazović dismissed Brđanin, the head of the Police Administration, following allegations that he was friendly with organized crime suspects. Nonetheless, the dismissal suffered from procedural shortcomings, and the Administrative Court decided that it was illegal. Abazović’s government ignored the decision. Nonetheless, after the Administrative Court reiterated its earlier decision and issued a final decision, the new government headed by Spajić decided to follow the Court’s directives, and Brđanin resumed his work in December.44
• In early September, the Higher Court in Podgorica informed the public that its archives, where the evidence from both old and ongoing cases is kept, had been broken into. The public soon learned that an underground tunnel had been constructed to break into the room, while authorities gave conflicting statements on how much evidence was stolen.45 The Basic State Prosecution opened an investigation into the case, and several people were arrested in October.46 Still, it remains unclear who orchestrated the endeavor, which would involve significant financial and human resources. Meanwhile, the Special Prosecutor’s Office continues to receive conflicting signals from the government on the feasibility of moving to more protected premises in the future.
• Intercepted communications between organized crime members continued to be leaked in the media in 2023. In several cases, Montenegrin police officers were alleged to have tortured people linked to one of the country’s two major organized crime groups, the Škaljarski clan, on behalf of the rival Kavački clan. Some of the victims had reported their mistreatment to prosecutors two years earlier, but the cases had not been adequately examined.47 Interior Minister Adžić openly stated that due to scarce human resources in the ministry, he was not able to suspend police officers despite clear indications of their involvement in torture. Adžić only suspended four police officers in April after nine months of inaction, following public pressure, in particular from the NGO Human Rights Action (HRA).48
• In mid-December, women’s rights organizations protested a Higher Court ruling finding that the death of a pregnant Roma woman after she was brutally beaten by her husband qualified as domestic violence rather than murder, leading to a milder prison first-instance sentence of 12 years for the perpetrator.49
• In November, Vijesti started publishing alleged conversations between the former president of Supreme Court, Vesna Medenica, and various officials, including prosecutors, judges, members of the Judicial Council, and the director of Agency for Prevention of Corruption. The alleged conversations raised concerns about Medenica’s undue influence over these supposedly independent institutions, impacting decisions such as returning confiscated phones to defendants in criminal cases or improperly interfering in lower courts’ personnel policies.50
• The new government presented ambitious plans for judicial reform at the end of 2023, including plans to pass new laws, establish a specialized court for organized crime and corruption cases, and transform the Special Police Department into an independent agency. Nonetheless, disagreements emerged soon after the plan’s unveiling, with, among other things, Justice Minister Andrej Milović of PES urging the dismissal of the head of the Special Police Department for his alleged involvement in affairs targeting Prime Minister Spajić, and clashing with Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic of the Democrats over personnel policy.51

• In 2023 there was still no national anticorruption strategy or action plan put in place that would ensure better coordination and cooperation between anticorruption bodies. In general, there were also no significant legal or institutional enhancements to the anticorruption institutional framework this year. Montenegro has yet to address in full the recommendations of the EU Peer Review missions conducted in 2019 and 2021, and recommendations made by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption in 2022 also remain largely unfulfilled.52
• The National Council for the Fight against High-Level Corruption held three sessions during 2023, during which the illegal exploitation of natural resources was discussed. The last session was held in early September.53 It has not completed its main task of preparing the national anticorruption strategy and action plan, which it has been worked on since mid-2022. Since taking office in October, Spajić’s new government has not yet resumed the council’s work on the anticorruption strategy.
• In the first half of 2023, MPs from Abazović’s previous government accused the director of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, Jelena Perović, of political bias that caused the agency to overlook abuses of power by representatives of the DPS, which had held power in Montenegro from the introduction of multiparty elections in 1991 until 2020. The agency is tasked with playing a key role in whistleblower protection, monitoring of use of public resources during elections, tracking the lifestyles of public officials to detect possible corruption, asset declaration, and prevention of conflicts of interest. Under the current legislation, only the Council of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption can dismiss the agency’s director. In the first half of 2023, MPs from the parliament’s Anti-Corruption Committee formed a working group that prepared draft amendments that would increase Parliament’s powers over the agency, including over the appointment and dismissal procedure of members of the Council and the director.54 However, the amendments did not receive a vote in 2023, since Parliament was dissolved by then-president Đukanović in March. The mandate of the agency’s Council ended in July and new members have not yet been appointed, incapacitating the Council.
• Alleged conversations between Perović and the former head of the Supreme Court, Vesna Medenica, leaked during Medenica’s ongoing trial. Media published excerpts from their alleged correspondence in the fall, showing Perović consulted Medenica about the anticorruption chief’s work on ongoing cases.55 At the same time, some agency employees have formed a union and publicly sounded the alarm about alleged misuse of authority by the agency’s management, accusing it of offering additional honoraria to management and some employees and of retaliating against whistleblowers.56
• When it comes to convictions for high-level corruption, Montenegro’s track record remained poor in 2023. However, the Special Prosecutor’s Office launched several investigations and filed indictment against one of its own special prosecutors, Saša Čađenović. Other indictments targeted a board member of the state-owned winery Plantaže,57 formerly high-ranking officials involved in housing loan scandals between 2016 and 2020,58 and a former minister implicated in a case related to a loan from the Development Fund of Abu Dhabi.59 The Special Prosecutor’s Office has also initiated numerous procedures that use data from the messaging encryption platform Sky ECC provided by the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) as evidence.
• In 2023, the capacity of anticorruption bodies remained low. The Special Prosecutor’s Office still works from its old premises that had been deemed inadequate, and it does not have satisfactory electronic access to official public databases and registries. Fewer than half of the positions on the Special Police unit that supports the work of the Special Prosecutor’s Office have been filled. In addition, the Supreme Court still does not have an adequate number of judges to deal with the increasing caseload of high-level corruption cases, slowing their progress.
• The outgoing government’s proposal of amendments to Montenegro’s legal framework dealing with asset confiscation, the so-called anti-mafia law,60 has been withdrawn from the parliamentary procedure. It was criticized by the European Commission and EU experts, as well as CSOs dealing with this topic,61 as failing to make asset confiscation more effective and violating international human rights standards. Among other objections, critics said that, instead of clearly expressing the subsidiary character of confiscation outside of criminal proceedings, the bill takes that form of confiscation as a rule. Also, an anticorruption NGO, the Network for the Affirmation of the Nongovernmental Sector (MANS), objected to the law’s 10-year statute of limitations, arguing that those enriched in the 1990s during the transition period following the breakup of Yugoslavia would go unpunished.62

Authors: Milena Muk and Marko Sošić are policy analysts at the Montenegrin think tank Institute Alternative, where they study interrelated issues of rule of law and public administration reform, including the monitoring of public finance and parliamentary oversight.