Montenegro Ends Longstanding Language Row

After months of stalemate, Montenegrin Prime Minister Igor Luksic and opposition leaders agreed that the academic subject in the country’s education system will be entitled "Montenegrin – Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian language and literature".  .

Until now, opposition parties had been conditioning their support to the Election Law, a key requirement on country’s path towards the EU, demanding that the Serbian language receive equal status alongside Montenegrin in the education system.

At the last census 36 per cent said that they spoke the Montenegrin language and 44 per cent of citizens said they spoke the Serbian language.

Adoption of the Election Law is one of the crucial preconditions set by Brussels for Montenegro to gain a date for the commencement of accession negotiations. A two-thirds majority of MPs need to support the law, in order for Parliament to pass it.

PM Luksic said that the solution showed that Montenegrin remained an official language, while ensuring full protection of other languages ​​from any kind of discrimination.

“We are now able to utilise in a good way the richness of the Montenegrin society, of our civic state, by implementing a truly European solution to the issue of language,” said Luksic.

The curriculum for this school year will remain almost the same, while the expert commission will draft a permanent curriculum that is supposed to be implemented next academic year.

Former Montenegrin Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, also took part in the talks that resulted in the deal.