Country-wide policy
Large Parts of the Foreigners Act Are Enacted and Dormant, and Only Article 221 Tells You Which
Montenegro legislates ahead of its accession to the European Union, and the Zakon o strancima carries the result. Chapter IX, articles 150 to 178b, is a full transposition of the free-movement directive for nationals of EU member states and their family members, rewritten almost entirely by the amending Act of 31 December 2025 and touched again in March 2026. Article 1, as amended in 2026, even says that those articles govern the entry, exit, movement, residence and work of EU nationals and that the rest of the Act applies to them only where it expressly says so. None of it is in application. Article 221(1), unchanged since 2018, defers articles 150 to 203 and six other provisions to the day Montenegro accedes to the Union, and the 2026 Act added article 221b deferring a further list - electronic visa applications, agency posting of workers, several grounds of permit refusal - to the same day. For a reader the practical effect is a trap: the chapter reads as live law, it was amended twice in 2026, and the sentence that makes it dormant sits two hundred articles later under a heading about transitional provisions. An EU national today needs a ground under article 38 like anyone else, and the only EU-specific right that is in force is the exemption in article 56(5) from the property-value proof, which the 2026 Act wrote into the body of the Act rather than into the deferred chapter.
Topics it changes
- Residency under a regional treaty
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
- Visiting as a tourist
What it requires
- Read article 221 before relying on anything in articles 150 to 203 of the Zakon o strancima
- Until accession, apply on one of the grounds in article 38 whatever your nationality
At a glance
- Provisions deferred to accession
- Articles 150 to 203, plus article 50(5), article 67(1) points 5 to 7, articles 115, 120, 121 and 122, article 210(1) points 12 to 14 and article 215
Article 221(1) of the Zakon o strancima, enacted in 2018 and not amended since.
- Further provisions deferred in 2026
- Article 21(7) to (10), article 68(3)(3), articles 75, 75a, 75b, 75c and 75g, and article 78(1) points 7a and 7c
Article 221b, inserted by article 91 of the amending Act of 31 December 2025.
- EU-specific rule that is in force today
- The exemption of EU, Icelandic, Liechtenstein, Norwegian and Swiss nationals and their family members from the property-value proof
Article 56(5) of the Zakon o strancima, inserted by article 24 of the same amending Act into the ordinary chapter rather than into the deferred one.
What the law says
«Odredba člana 50 stav 5, člana 67 stav 1 tač. 5, 6 i 7, člana 115, čl. 120, 121 i 122, čl. 150 do 203, člana 210 stav 1 tač. 12, 13 i 14 i člana 215 ovog zakona primjenjivaće se od dana pristupanja Crne Gore Evropskoj uniji.»Our translation - not official
The provisions of article 50 paragraph 5, article 67 paragraph 1 points 5, 6 and 7, article 115, articles 120, 121 and 122, articles 150 to 203, article 210 paragraph 1 points 12, 13 and 14 and article 215 of this Act shall apply from the day of the accession of Montenegro to the European Union.
About this source
The official gazette of Montenegro, published by the public institution JU Sluzbeni list Crne Gore, which also runs the country's legal information system (PIS). Everything the Montenegrin state enacts appears here and only here as an authentic text: Acts of the Skupstina with the President's promulgating decree printed above them, Government decrees and decisions, ministerial rulebooks, Constitutional Court decisions, and separate series for municipal regulations, international treaties and the predecessor Sluzbeni list Republike Crne Gore up to 2006. Each instrument has a record page at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id> which is server-rendered and carries, in plain text, the date of publication, the gazette issue, the registry number, the issuing body, the date of entry into force and often the date of first application, the EU negotiating chapter it belongs to, and the status Vazeci or Nevazeci - in force or no longer in force. The same page cross-links the instruments this one amends, the instruments that amend it, the constitutional provisions it was made under and the subordinate acts made under it, which is the cheapest way in existence to assemble a Montenegrin amendment chain. The text itself is a PDF at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id>/download, one file per instrument rather than one per issue. Issues are indexed by year at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/registri?type=0&year=<year> with type 0 for Sluzbeni list Crne Gore and type 3 for the pre-2006 Republican series, and each issue page lists every instrument in it with a link. Article 13 of the Constitution puts the Cyrillic and Latin scripts on an equal footing and the gazette uses both: some Acts of 2010 and 2011 and some Government decisions are printed wholly in Cyrillic, and a /cyr/ mirror of the site exists. Amending Acts are published as free-standing instruments in the classic civil-law form - 'in article N, paragraph M is replaced and reads' - and are never consolidated into the parent Act here, so the current text of a provision has to be assembled from the base Act and every amendment that touched it.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments and it does not consolidate them. There is no consolidated text of any Act on this site: the regis.sluzbenilist.me legal information system that would give one is an Angular application that returns a 6 KB shell to any fetcher, and its own feature table reads as a subscription product, so it is not reachable by any tool this project has. Assembling the law in force therefore means reading the base Act plus every amending Act, and the site's own cross-reference list cannot be relied on to be complete - the record for the Zakon o crnogorskom drzavljanstvu lists four of its seven amending Acts, the record for the Zakon o porezu na dohodak fizickih lica lists ten of at least sixteen, and the record for the citizenship-by-investment decision lists none at all because the record is classified 'Neklasifikovan'. The site search is client-side only: the search box on /propisi is an Alpine.js model and a searchTerm query parameter is ignored by the server, which returns a generic list, so an instrument is found through the issue index, through a cross-link on a related record, or through an external search engine. Some record identifiers are UUIDs rather than numbers and those do not answer at /download. Two of its own PDFs are defective and must not be quoted from: the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima (33/2012) extracts with a broken character map - Cyrillic a, e and o standing inside Latin words, C-circumflex for C-caron, t-cedilla for z-caron - through the body of the Act while the penalty articles come out clean, and downloading the file directly or passing it through the extraction service makes no difference. It must not be cited for anything the state has not enacted: it carries no guidance, no fee a ministry charges in practice, no processing time, no country list maintained outside a decree, and nothing at all about how an authority applies the text it prints. The status field is a useful signal and not a legal conclusion: the citizenship-by-investment decision is still marked Vazeci although its own article 18 stopped applying on 31 December 2022.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«Odredbe člana 21 st. 7 do 10, člana 68 stav 3 tačka 3, čl. 75, 75a, 75b, 75v i 75g i člana 78 stav 1 tač. 7a i 7v ovog zakona primjenjivaće se od dana pristupanja Crne Gore Evropskoj uniji.»Our translation - not official
The provisions of article 21 paragraphs 7 to 10, article 68 paragraph 3 point 3, articles 75, 75a, 75b, 75c and 75g and article 78 paragraph 1 points 7a and 7c of this Act shall apply from the day of the accession of Montenegro to the European Union.
About this source
The official gazette of Montenegro, published by the public institution JU Sluzbeni list Crne Gore, which also runs the country's legal information system (PIS). Everything the Montenegrin state enacts appears here and only here as an authentic text: Acts of the Skupstina with the President's promulgating decree printed above them, Government decrees and decisions, ministerial rulebooks, Constitutional Court decisions, and separate series for municipal regulations, international treaties and the predecessor Sluzbeni list Republike Crne Gore up to 2006. Each instrument has a record page at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id> which is server-rendered and carries, in plain text, the date of publication, the gazette issue, the registry number, the issuing body, the date of entry into force and often the date of first application, the EU negotiating chapter it belongs to, and the status Vazeci or Nevazeci - in force or no longer in force. The same page cross-links the instruments this one amends, the instruments that amend it, the constitutional provisions it was made under and the subordinate acts made under it, which is the cheapest way in existence to assemble a Montenegrin amendment chain. The text itself is a PDF at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id>/download, one file per instrument rather than one per issue. Issues are indexed by year at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/registri?type=0&year=<year> with type 0 for Sluzbeni list Crne Gore and type 3 for the pre-2006 Republican series, and each issue page lists every instrument in it with a link. Article 13 of the Constitution puts the Cyrillic and Latin scripts on an equal footing and the gazette uses both: some Acts of 2010 and 2011 and some Government decisions are printed wholly in Cyrillic, and a /cyr/ mirror of the site exists. Amending Acts are published as free-standing instruments in the classic civil-law form - 'in article N, paragraph M is replaced and reads' - and are never consolidated into the parent Act here, so the current text of a provision has to be assembled from the base Act and every amendment that touched it.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments and it does not consolidate them. There is no consolidated text of any Act on this site: the regis.sluzbenilist.me legal information system that would give one is an Angular application that returns a 6 KB shell to any fetcher, and its own feature table reads as a subscription product, so it is not reachable by any tool this project has. Assembling the law in force therefore means reading the base Act plus every amending Act, and the site's own cross-reference list cannot be relied on to be complete - the record for the Zakon o crnogorskom drzavljanstvu lists four of its seven amending Acts, the record for the Zakon o porezu na dohodak fizickih lica lists ten of at least sixteen, and the record for the citizenship-by-investment decision lists none at all because the record is classified 'Neklasifikovan'. The site search is client-side only: the search box on /propisi is an Alpine.js model and a searchTerm query parameter is ignored by the server, which returns a generic list, so an instrument is found through the issue index, through a cross-link on a related record, or through an external search engine. Some record identifiers are UUIDs rather than numbers and those do not answer at /download. Two of its own PDFs are defective and must not be quoted from: the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima (33/2012) extracts with a broken character map - Cyrillic a, e and o standing inside Latin words, C-circumflex for C-caron, t-cedilla for z-caron - through the body of the Act while the penalty articles come out clean, and downloading the file directly or passing it through the extraction service makes no difference. It must not be cited for anything the state has not enacted: it carries no guidance, no fee a ministry charges in practice, no processing time, no country list maintained outside a decree, and nothing at all about how an authority applies the text it prints. The status field is a useful signal and not a legal conclusion: the citizenship-by-investment decision is still marked Vazeci although its own article 18 stopped applying on 31 December 2022.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
Practical notes
No accession date is in any instrument we read, and none is stated here.
The 2026 amending Act closes with a footnote listing the directives transposed, among them 2004/38/EC, 2003/109/EC, 2003/86/EC, 2009/52/EC, 2014/36/EU, 96/71/EC, 2014/67/EU and 2018/957. Which of those transpositions are in force and which are deferred is the question article 221 answers.