Country-wide policy
Montenegro Uses the Euro and No Instrument We Could Find Says So - the Central Bank Act Is Written for a Currency the Country Does Not Have
Montenegro pays in euros and has done since 2002, but the statute book does not declare it. The Constitution of Montenegro has no currency provision at all. The Zakon o Centralnoj banci Crne Gore of 2010 is drafted the other way round: article 5 gives the Central Bank the exclusive right to issue banknotes and coin 'if Montenegro were to introduce its own currency' - a conditional about a future that has not happened - and lets it issue commemorative notes and coin that are not means of payment. The euro appears in the Act only obliquely, in article 13, which has the Bank keep a revaluation reserve account covering unrealised expenses on currencies that are not the EUR, gold and securities. The one Act that treats the euro as the domestic unit does it by assumption rather than by enactment: article 1 of the Zakon o tekucim i kapitalnim poslovima sa inostranstvom governs payment transactions between residents and non-residents 'in the euro and in a currency which is not the euro', and gives residents the right to hold means of payment in a currency which is not the euro. That is the whole of what we found. For a reader it means the practical answers are simple - thresholds, fees, taxes and bank limits across Montenegrin law are all written in euros with no conversion rule anywhere, because there is nothing to convert from - while the legal answer is that the arrangement rests on practice and on statutes drafted around it rather than on a provision naming a legal tender.
Topics it changes
What it requires
- Expect every amount in Montenegrin law to be in euros, with no conversion rate stated anywhere
- Do not expect euro-area rules to follow: Montenegro is not a member of the euro area and its central bank does not issue the currency it uses
At a glance
- Provision naming the legal tender
- None in the Constitution of Montenegro and none in the Zakon o Centralnoj banci Crne Gore
The Constitution has no currency article; its article 13 is about language and script. The Central Bank Act mentions the euro only in article 13, on the revaluation reserve account for currencies that are not the EUR.
- What the Central Bank Act says about issuing money
- The Bank has the exclusive right to issue banknotes and coin if Montenegro were to introduce its own currency
Article 5 of the Zakon o Centralnoj banci Crne Gore (Sluzbeni list CG 40/10). The conditional is in the statute.
- The nearest thing to a statutory recognition
- Article 1 of the Zakon o tekucim i kapitalnim poslovima sa inostranstvom, which divides payments into the euro and a currency which is not the euro
Sluzbeni list RCG 45/05. It presupposes the euro as the domestic unit without enacting it.
What the law says
«Централна банка има искључиво право издавања новчаница и кованог новца, уколико би Црна Гора увела сопствену валуту. Централна банка може издавати јубиларне новчанице и ковани новац које нијесу средство плаћања.»Our translation - not official
The Central Bank has the exclusive right to issue banknotes and coin, if Montenegro were to introduce its own currency. The Central Bank may issue commemorative banknotes and coin which are not a means of payment.
Published in the Cyrillic script, which article 13 of the Constitution puts on an equal footing with the Latin script.
Read it at the sourceAbout 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
«Централна банка успоставља и води рачун ревалоризационих резерви за покриће нереализованих расхода по основу валута које нијесу ЕУР, злата, хар- тија од вриједности и других средстава.»Our translation - not official
The Central Bank establishes and keeps a revaluation reserve account to cover unrealised expenses on account of currencies which are not the EUR, gold, securities and other assets.
The only place the euro is named in the Act, and it is named as the thing other currencies are measured against. The hyphenation inside a word is the gazette's own line break.
Read it at the sourceAbout 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
«Ovim zakonom uređuje se obavljanje poslova platnog prometa između rezidenata i nerezidenata u euru i valuti koja nije euro, načini prenosa imovine u Republiku Crnu Goru (u daljem tekstu: Republika) i iz Republike i pravo rezidenata na posjedovanje sredstava plaćanja u valuti koja nije euro.»Our translation - not official
This Act governs the carrying out of payment transactions between residents and non-residents in the euro and in a currency which is not the euro, the manner of transferring property into and out of the Republic of Montenegro and the right of residents to hold means of payment in a currency which is not the euro.
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
This is a bounded absence, not a survey. What we read is the Constitution of Montenegro in full, the Zakon o Centralnoj banci Crne Gore in full, and the Zakon o tekucim i kapitalnim poslovima sa inostranstvom in full. We searched all three for the words euro, currency, means of payment and legal tender, in both scripts. If a separate Government decision of 2001 or 2002 declared the euro, we did not find it in the gazette and it is not referred to in any of the three Acts.
The Central Bank Act has been amended since 2010 and we read only the Act as enacted, so a later amendment could have added something we have not seen.