A new European response for new times

At a recent rally in Berane, Andrija Mandić did what experienced politicians do when reality overtakes their ideas: he translated the old program into a new language. He presented the "New Serbian Answer for the New Time" as a policy of equality and responsibility, while preserving the Serbian identity and the European path. The vocabulary was polished, the tone conciliatory, and the message adapted to the European moment. That is why his speech should be measured by European standards.

The starting point is quite legitimate: tradition, language, culture and religion are not obstacles to a European future. Montenegro must become a member of the European Union as soon as possible. Integration is not the political prey of any party or government.

But it is crucial what kind of country will join the Union. Membership alone will not build institutions or establish the rule of law; Brussels will not do this for Montenegro. It depends on us whether integration will be reduced to closing chapters while maintaining party-political compromises or whether it will become the foundation of a democratic state based on European rules and equality of all before the law.

The problem is not at all in the demand for equality of Serbs, but in the model of the state from which Mandić derives this demand. Equality cannot rest on historical precedence, a special right to the state, or on the assumption that peoples, churches, and political elites are allowed to share institutions and power. European equality is not an ethnic distribution of state spoils, but an order in which institutions are free from the control of parties, churches, and national projects.

The key question is therefore not whether identity and Europe can be reconciled, but what kind of state protects identities and guarantees their rights. A European state protects freedom of language, culture, tradition and religion, but does not turn identities into bearers of political power. It does not demand the renunciation of belonging, but it does not allow history to become the basis of political primacy and a means of manipulation, for institutions to become a means of national domination, or for the European path to be an addition to a national project.

Mandić's answer therefore remains incomplete: the vocabulary has changed, but not the model of the state. Equality is still imagined as a distribution of power among national, party and church elites, and not as the equality of citizens before independent institutions. The rights to identity, language, culture and religion do not give ethnic elites the right to wield state power. Institutions are European when they guarantee every citizen equal access to justice, work, education, healthcare and administration - without identity conditioning and party ties.

Proponents of ethnic power-sharing - or spoils - respond that without solid guarantees in the civil order, minorities may disappear. This objection is partly justified: where institutions have served the authoritarian majority in power, minority distrust is not a whim, but a response to bad experience.

But ethnic quotas are not and cannot be the solution. They embed distrust in the foundations of the system and turn the state into a mechanism for dividing power among national elites. The solution is institutions that no community can appropriate or use against others. Civil order is not assimilation, but an order in which identity does not depend on the mercy of the authorities, and rights on the change of the political majority.

It is equally wrong to respond to Serbian national mobilization with a Montenegrin or sovereignist "front." Self-proclaimed guardians of the state often see it not as a common good, but as a spoil to be preserved for "ours" and denied to "them." Such a policy does not defend Montenegro; it merely changes the flag under which the state is appropriated and the scope of abuses.

Montenegro is not the property of any national narrative, nor can any community claim a monopoly on it. It has been shaped by diverse identities, languages, religions and traditions. Defending Montenegro does not mean locking it into one version of the past, but preserving it as a shared political and legal space for all its citizens.

The same applies to Mandić's thesis about reconciliation. Peace is not a silence on the past, nor a political amnesty in which truth and responsibility are sacrificed for the sake of a new division of power. Without established truth, justice, and individual responsibility, reconciliation is just a repackaged version of old politics.

The very concept of "reconciliation" misrepresents the problem, because it presupposes collectively warring communities whose representatives are supposed to make a new settlement. Divisions are real, but politics deepens them and turns them into the basis of the distribution of power. People who are classified by party affiliation and religion work the same shifts, wait at the same counters, and live in the same buildings. Politics not only maintains these divisions, it also consciously deepens them, because it extracts votes, positions, privileges, and political appanage from them.

Montenegro does not need a pact of national chiefs, concluded over the heads of citizens, but an order of equal people. Recognition of diversity begins with the constitutional principle according to which no one can demand equality for themselves and at the same time deny it to others. This means protecting oneself from the arbitrariness of others, but also others from one's own power - with law, independent institutions and individual responsibility.

The right to language, culture and religion must not depend on election results, party compromises or the mercy of the government. These are the rights of citizens and the obligations of the state, not political ammunition. No party can appropriate a language, no elite a culture, nor any church a state identity policy.

The secular state is not an opponent of religion, but a guarantor of its freedom. It protects the autonomy of religious communities, but does not hand over public power to them: it protects religion from political arbitrariness, and politics from church domination. All religious communities are obliged to act in accordance with the Constitution and laws of Montenegro. When one of them acts as an instrument of malignant foreign influence or hybrid action directed against the state, the competent authorities must act in accordance with the law and mechanisms for protecting the constitutional order.

The only sustainable foundation for a European Montenegro is the rule of law. The reform of the judiciary, prosecution, police and administration must not be reduced to the transfer of control from one political bloc to another or to the division of institutions according to party, national or religious quotas. Changing the ownership of a captive state is not reform; reform begins only when institutions cease to have political owners.

Such a state requires an uncompromising fight against crime, systemic corruption and power centers that influence elections and the work of state bodies. The European path is not a compromise between nationalisms, but a decisive break with their common practice of appropriating and capturing the state, subordinating institutions and turning national identities into means of domination, corruption and plundering public resources.

Montenegro will not overcome internal divisions, develop and consolidate itself through agreements between national elites, but through institutions that belong to no one and before which everyone is equal. In such a state, no identity gives the right to political primacy, control over institutions or privileged access to public resources. No one should be forced to negotiate their own identity, seek a party intermediary or prove national suitability in order to exercise the right to justice, work, education, security and political participation. As long as these rights depend on affiliation, connections or political protection, Montenegro will not be a European state, but a prey managed by a new group of owners.

The true test of European politics is simple and relentless: do European rules still apply when they limit "ours" - our party, our church, our nation and our allies? If they then cease to apply, it is not European politics, but a particular interest cloaked in European rhetoric.

On this test, Mandić's "new Serbian answer" offers nothing new for now. As long as identity serves as a legitimation for the appropriation of the state, and Europe as a cover for the division of functions, the corrupt distribution of resources and the subjugation of institutions, the same matrix of power remains: national mobilization outwards, clientelism inwards and European rhetoric as political packaging.

It is completely irrelevant whether the suit is from Brioni, Zegna or Loro Piana - the European cut does not change politics that still sees the state as prey, institutions as party property, and citizens as subjects of national and clientelistic elites.