The process of Montenegro's accession to the European Union (EU) is not a buffet from which the Montenegrin authorities can take what they like and skip what they don't like, but it also brings a lot of bitter tastes for many parts of society, especially for those who think they are destined to forever hold the levers of power. That is how the executive director of the Center for Civic Education (CGO) Daliborka Uljarević commented that the authorities are increasingly ignoring the views of the EU and Western partners.
The European Commission (EC) announced just two weeks ago that Montenegro will be able to progress further in Chapters 23 and 24, i.e. towards the EU, only if it addresses shortcomings in critical areas - freedom of expression and the fight against corruption (the third critical area is trade people).
Despite this, the ruling coalition postponed the election of members of the Council for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK), for which a certain number of credible candidates had applied, while the list of candidates for members of the RTCG Council clearly indicates that it intends to keep RTCG under control.
The head of the EU Delegation in Montenegro, Aivo Orav, on the eve of the election of the new RTCG Council, reminded on Twitter of the "importance of removing the cause of political interference in the national public service RTCG", which was soon supported by his bosses in Brussels, and the embassies of Germany and the United States of America (USA) in Podgorica.
Uljarević says that it is a coordinated and strong diplomatic message.
"A rational government that thinks long-term and has the national interest in front of it would take seriously the warnings that are coming in an increasingly explicit form from the EC, but also from other foreign political partners. And accordingly, she would change bad habits, even though it means leaving the comfort zone and losing certain influences," says Uljarević.
Here, she says, our government is behaving "Balkan":
"In the worst understanding of the way to conduct politics - without any long-term state strategy, but with elaborate tactics until the next elections, without the burden that the implementation of those actions can cost the state and society and with an infantile stubbornness to test the limits of the international club in which he voluntarily wants to enter, that is, in this case the EU", says Uljarević.
Montenegro's further progress towards the EU will certainly not be positively affected by the fact that the Judicial Council proposed Vesna Medenica for the position of President of the Supreme Court, which is her third mandate.
Although the EC refrains from commenting on the judiciary, the EC Report on Montenegro states that there are constitutional and legal guarantees that ensure the independence of the judiciary, but that the judiciary still considers it vulnerable to political interference.
The EU and the State Department reacted earlier to the dismissal of Andrijana Kadrija from the post of director of the RTCG, some Western diplomats were very reserved about the choice of Veselin Veljović as director of the Police Directorate, while the question of the attitude of NATO partners to the decision to employ a former ANB official in the police is also open. by Zoran Lazović.
"One gets the impression that someone's assessment in the authorities is that the fact that the EU now has some other focuses can be a good opportunity to finish all the "dirty jobs" in the process of "legalized party capture" of institutions. I would say that this is a short-sighted and bad assessment. Maybe it seems to our decision makers in government that they have become Europeans when they put on expensive suits from that developed Europe, but Europeanization does not go with trampling European standards and best practices, and that is exactly what they are doing, with particular intensity in the last two years", she concluded. is Uljarević.
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