Stepmother without water

"Your mother can leave you without bread, and your stepmother without water," Albanian folk proverb

This saying makes a distinction between scarcity and injustice. A mother sometimes can't give you everything, but she won't deny you what you can't live without. A stepmother can have everything, but not even give you water. When the people of Ulcinj talk about the sea today, they don't complain about scarcity. They talk about the fact that the state has been treating their coast like a stepmother for thirty-four years: it takes the most and gives the least back.

This is no longer a matter of impression. This is shown by data from the comparative presentation of revenues and expenditures of the Public Company for Coastal Zone Management for 2025.

Last year, JP Morsko dobro generated a total of 15,6 million euros in revenue from the concession of space. Ulcinj with Ada Bojana brought in 5,45 million - more than a third of the total amount and more than any other coastal municipality, including Budva. In the same year, 796.629 euros were returned to Ulcinj. Of every euro that the Ulcinj coast earns, about fifteen cents are returned to Ulcinj.

A comparison with other municipalities makes the picture clearer. In Herceg Novi, which generated 1,45 million euros in revenue, 1,83 million was invested - more than it earned. Bar received back over 1,5 million of the 1,88 million, more than 80 percent. Kotor about half. Ulcinj fifteen percent. Not even the investments from the 2025 budget, which will be implemented during 2026, change this logic: about 600 thousand euros are planned for Ulcinj, less than for Bar, from the coffers that Ulcinj fills more than anyone else.

Solidarity between municipalities is legitimate and necessary, and no one is asking for every euro to be returned exactly where it was earned. But when a municipality that brings in 35 percent of its revenue gets 14 percent of its investment, while others get more than they put in, that is not solidarity. That is an imbalance built into the system.

It does not start with money, but with borders. The coastal zone in Ulcinj covers 33 million square meters: 13 percent of the municipality's territory and 57 percent of the total area of ​​the coastal zone in Montenegro. No other municipality carries anything close to such a burden. The borders drawn in 1992 do not only encompass a narrow coastal strip, but also extend deep into the mainland and encompass land that does not have the direct function of a coast - areas important for urban planning, investment, agriculture and the local economy. When the most valuable part of a municipality is placed under a regime decided outside that municipality, the result is a stalemate.

The cost of this standstill is measured in decades. According to realistic estimates, Ulcinj's direct and indirect losses from 1992 to the present day range between 60 and 100 million euros: unbuilt promenades and piers, missed investments, weaker communal infrastructure, fewer jobs. And every season Ulcinj bears the full burden of guests, waste, traffic and pressure on public services. The costs are paid locally, and the revenues are managed by someone else.

Before anyone reads this story as disloyalty, it is worth recalling one fact. In the 2006 referendum, almost 90 percent of the citizens of Ulcinj voted for the independence of Montenegro, more convincingly than in most municipalities in the country. The city that voted in this way gained the right to be an equal participant in the state it chose, and not a community that is treated differently by that same state than by everyone else - in a way that can hardly be called anything other than discriminatory.

This is not a demand against the state. The coast is not an ordinary space and the state has the right and obligation to protect it from devastation, unplanned construction and privatization of the public interest. But protection must not be an excuse for centralization, nor for one community to live under a stricter regime than all others for decades. Back in 2024, Prime Minister Milojko Spajić announced in parliament a new Law on the Marine Domain, in the preparation of which coastal municipalities, including Ulcinj, would participate, with the promise that the Government is ready to hear all arguments. The arguments now exist, in the tables of the Public Company itself, among other things.

The new law is an opportunity to correct this imbalance. Three things are crucial: to review the boundaries of the maritime domain where they are clearly disputed; to give municipalities, and Ulcinj in particular, a real role in managing their own coastline; and to keep most of the revenue where it is generated and where the greatest costs are incurred. When Ulcinj regulates its coastline, it is not just Ulcinj that benefits - it benefits tourism, the local economy and the whole of Montenegro.

Ulcinj trusted this state more than almost anyone else in 2006. The new Law on Maritime Domain is an opportunity for the state to finally return that trust - not with privileges, but with simple, measurable equality. Ulcinj is asking for nothing more than that. But nothing less either.

The author is a civil engineer.