The European Commission’s (EC) 2020 Report on Montenegro says that the reporting period was marked by tensions and mistrust between political actors and low level of trust in the electoral framework. As for the area of justice, Montenegro has made limited progress and last year’s recommendations on the judiciary have been implemented partially. Challenges remain, especially in terms of the independence, professionalism, efficiency and accountability of the justice system.
The report suggests that, according to preliminary findings of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), the elections were competitive and were managed transparently and efficiently, but took place in an environment highly polarized over issues of church, and national identity.
The role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro’s politics
The campaign was peaceful despite the frequent confrontational tone. Contestants were able to convey their messages, but OSCE/ODIHR expressed a number of concerns in relation to an undue advantage for the ruling party and unbalanced media coverage.
The elections resulted in an unprecedented change of the ruling majority composition. The new parliament should find a broad cross-party and societal consensus and demonstrate in practice its commitment to Montenegro’s EU reform agenda, which is vital for the country’s progress on its EU path.
The EC Report reminds that in 2019 and the first half of 2020, the Parliament could not ensure the necessary two-thirds majority for important appointments of judges, that is, key functions in the justice system are being performed by acting prosecutors, whereas the term of office of the supreme state prosecutor expired in October 2019 and his successor still hasn’t been appointed.
There were no new developments in the political and judicial follow-up of the alleged misuse of public funds for party political purposes that took place in 2012 (the ‘audio recordings affair’).
Montenegro has achieved some level of preparation in the fight against corruption, and it made limited progress on last year’s recommendations which were only partially addressed.
The Agency for Prevention of Corruption, now under new management, has continued to strengthen its capacities, but there’re still challenges related to its independence, priority-setting, selective approach and quality of decisions.
Montenegro has some level of preparedness/is moderately prepared when it comes to the fight against organized crime.
However, the EC document suggests that Montenegro still needs to address some fundamental and systemic shortcomings in its criminal justice system, including the way organized crime cases are being handled in courts.
An uncompromising fight against corruption and organized crime is one of the key points of the Agreement signed by the leaders of the three blocs.
On fundamental rights, Montenegro made some progress. The legislative and institutional framework in the area of fundamental rights is now largely in place.
The EC continued: “During the reporting period, Montenegro hasn’t achieved progress in the area of freedom of expression.”
Although progress has been made in the media legislation, this has been overshadowed by arrests and proceedings against portal editors and citizens for content posted or shared online during 2020.
Previous important cases of attacks remain unsolved, including the murder of the editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Dan in 2004 and the shooting of an investigative journalist back in 2018.
Concerns about the editorial independence and professional standards of the public broadcaster RTCG still exist.
The Progress Report was originally supposed to be published in May then was pushed back to the fall. The European Commission’s Progress Report on Montenegro for the past year (2019) stated that despite some progress, reforms in the rule of law were not at the desired level.
