Milojko Spajić's government issued 629 honorary citizenships in the first seven months of its work, mostly based on previously submitted requests within the Economic Citizenship Program, the Center for Civic Education (CGO) announced.
From that non-governmental organization, they indicated that in the last 16 years, that is, from May 26, 2008 to May 31 this year, 2.441 people received the so-called honorary citizenship of Montenegro.
As they stated, 2.074 citizenships were granted during the last four governments - Duško Marković, Zdravko Krivokapić, Dritan Abazović and Milojko Spajić, and the most from 2019 to this year.
The CGO said that, according to the data available to them, Abazović was the most generous in granting Montenegrin citizenships, whose government granted citizenships to 1.044 people, mainly under the controversial Economic Citizenship Program.
"The Spajić government may threaten that record with 629 issued citizenships in the first seven months of work, mainly deciding on previously submitted requests within the same program," CGO stated.
They said that Marković's government granted 110 and Krivokapić's 291 honorary citizenships to foreign citizens.
The CGO announced that they will soon publish a study with a more detailed cross-section of the granting of citizenships, with a focus on those based on the Economic Citizenship Program, which, as they stated, almost threatened Montenegro's visa-free regime with the European Union (EU).
They reminded that after numerous reminders, the EU Program ceased to be valid as of December 31 of last year, but that applications submitted until that day continued to be processed.
The research was carried out through the CGO program supported by the Core grant regional project SMART Balkan - Civil society for a connected Western Balkans, which is carried out by the Center for the Promotion of Civil Society (CPCD), the Center for Research and Public Policy (CRPM) and the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM) and is financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway.
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