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There are countries that lose wars. Some lose territory. Over the course of a century, Montenegro has lost something deeper and more dangerous: the habit of freedom.

That is why the restoration of statehood on May 21, 2006 was not just the return of a passport, a flag, and a seat in the United Nations. It was also a unique opportunity to provide a new historical answer to the question that every totalitarianism tries to suppress: whose country is this and who does its government serve?

Two decades later, the answer is unpleasant. Montenegro has a flag, a passport, and an internationally recognized state, but it lacks the thing without which all of this remains a stage set without content: a serious, functional, and responsible state.

Sovereignty was restored. The state was not built. It was captured - and in part remains so to this day.

From 1916 to 2020, Montenegro lived in a continuous state of political captivity. Only its guardians and occupiers changed: the occupation of 1916, the illegitimate Podgorica Assembly of 1918, Yugoslav integralism, fascism, and then communism, in which the free citizen was the enemy, and the party was the owner of the future.

The 1990s were a historic chance to break with this totalitarian legacy. But the League of Communists only changed its name at the time, while retaining its basic logic: the party is the state, and anyone who challenges this is not an opponent, but an enemy. Instead of ideological suitability came party suitability; instead of revolutionary phrases - tenders and clientelism; instead of a monopoly on an idea - a monopoly on the budget. Same logic, new costumes.

Instead of real democratization, its most perfidious and destructive version was established: a partitocracy under democratic packaging, with fake and rigged elections. The state was captured. DPS privatized institutions, disposed of public resources as party property, and degraded the very idea of ​​the state.

That is why anti-fascism, anti-communism and anti-totalitarianism in Montenegro today are not a matter of political choice, but rather the solid foundations of the state and a measure of its maturity. It is a demand for a final break with a culture in which the government does not understand the state as a public order, but as a possession - acquired by force, maintained over time and protected by impunity.

Partyocracy is not a Montenegrin invention, but rarely does it destroy a state so deeply as in a small country with weak institutions, short institutional memory, and deep clientelism and corruption. In such a system, parties do not serve the state; they appropriate it as prey and use it as a mechanism for their own survival.

In such an order, law ceases to be law and becomes a reward for the worthy; an institution ceases to be a public service and becomes an outpost of party will; the state ceases to be a common order and becomes a network of privileges for its own. This is vulgar party feudalism with electoral packaging.

The change of government in 2020 was necessary and historically important. It destroyed the most dangerous myth of Montenegrin politics: that one party can be the natural owner of the state and its permanent political state. But breaking a monopoly is not creating order. The fall of one government is not the establishment of a democratic order, nor the building of state institutions.

That is why the issue of membership in the European Union is today a matter of special national importance. Montenegro must not enter the European Union as a decoration in the geopolitical calculations of the great powers. It does not need Europe for the sake of praise from Brussels, if there is no real internal change behind that praise. Montenegro needs Europe for what it lacks: order, not improvisation; order, not party ownership; stability, not constant blackmail; justice, not corruption and favoritism; progress, not eternal backwardness.

Without an external framework that sets standards, measures obligations and sanctions improvisation, the Montenegrin political class will not build an independent judiciary, professional public administration and real accountability before the law on its own. It will not - because it has neither the political culture, nor the institutional discipline, nor the will to give up the mechanisms of a captive state. This is a rational political diagnosis of a small, post-communist state: unfinished institutions, a deep party legacy, a deep state, a short reform memory and a weak will to free itself.

For Montenegro, Europe is not a denial of oneself. Europe is a return to oneself.

The Kingdom of Montenegro was, despite its poverty and historical deprivation, a European state in terms of its political ambition, legal awareness and diplomatic appearance: a state with a constitution, law, diplomacy and a clear awareness that it belonged to the European civilizational space.

The problem, therefore, is not that Montenegro does not have a European origin. The problem is that it was forcibly cut off from that origin, and then for decades was pushed from citizenship to servitude, from institutions to improvisation, from state order to dependence on a leader and a party. Instead of a free, orderly and responsible state, a culture of political servitude and obedience was created, and the idea of ​​freedom was systematically suppressed.

That is why the European path is not a technical harmonisation of chapters, nor a mere translation of directives. It is a break in the logic of governance and the model of the state: the state must not be loot; the budget must not be a party fund; public administration must not be an election headquarters; identity must not be an excuse for incompetence; patriotism must not be a cover for corruption.

Without strong state institutions, there is no real freedom. Without real freedom, there is no prosperity. Without prosperity, there is no future: neither demographic, nor cultural, nor economic.

This is the basic lesson of an organized Europe: the civil servant serves the law, not the party; the budget serves the citizens, not the ruling network; the state serves the public good, not private and party interests.

Twenty years is both a short time and a long time. A short time for a country burdened by a century of captivity, broken continuity, and political disorientation. A long time for a generation that believed in 2006 that restoring statehood would not only mean the return of a name, flag, and international recognition, but also the beginning of building a serious, orderly, and responsible state.

Today we know: sovereignty was necessary. But it was not sufficient.

A people with a bright history of statehood, freedom struggle, resistance and dignity cannot consciously agree to party-based clientelism and remain silent in the face of their own decline. Then they abdicate from themselves - from their history, their freedom and their dignity.

If the coming years are used to build order, institutions and responsibility - for a state that is not a temporary possession of power, but a permanent home for its citizens - Montenegro can enter the European Union not as a tired country at someone else's door, unsure of its own worth, but as a state aware of itself: a state that knows who it is, what it wants and what kind of order it is building.

Returning to Europe is possible. It is not easy. It is not guaranteed. But it is the only political goal worthy of our history, our national dignity and the future that Montenegro must build. It is also the only path on which it can rebuild freedom - not as a slogan for political speeches, but as order, responsibility and dignity of the state and each of its citizens.

For Montenegro, Europe is not someone else's address. It is not an escape from oneself. It is a political name of hope, a legal form of freedom and a space of state dignity - a return to oneself, one's home and one's historical being.