CIAO DATE: 07/02

The Future of Montenegro: Proceedings of an Expert Meeting

Preface

The conference on the future of Montenegro held in CEPS on 26 February, attracted considerable interest from the media and from the policy-making community. At the time, the official position of the EU and US was that Montenegro should not contribute further to what they saw as a ten-year long process of Balkan disintegration. A number of the contributors to this conference agreed. Many Montenegrins, represented in substance here by President Djukanoviæ, Foreign Minister Branko Lukovac and Mijat Šukoviæ, put forward a serious case for Montenegrin independence.

The results of the parliamentary elections of April 2001 have changed the dynamic to one of greater caution on all sides, but the issues have not gone away and the basic positions of the actors remain the same. Michael Emerson's proposals for a very thin confederation may indeed prove to be close to the eventual shape of the constitutional settlement.

Greater consensus was generated by the discussion of Montenegro's economic prospects, led by Veselin Vukotiæ and Daniel Gros. Without reforms, the gaping hole in Montenegro's public finances cannot be filled. The new government has very difficult choices to make.

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