Budva: One million for the Serbian Orthodox Church, a total of 150 thousand euros for other religious communities

In its draft budget for 2026, the Municipality of Budva planned to pay religious communities 1.150.000 euros, 150 thousand more than originally planned.

Namely, when the draft budget was put to public debate, it specifically only envisaged a transfer of one million euros to the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, the same amount of donation that the Mayor of the Municipality, Nikola Jovanović, had promised Metropolitan Joanikije for the construction of the Church of St. Mark on the Budva bypass.

After the public debate was completed and the draft was submitted to the councilors, who are to vote at the local parliament session scheduled for December 31st, the item was renamed a transfer to religious communities and "grew" to 1.150.000 euros.

Leader and councilor of the citizens' group "Movement for the City" Đorđe Zenović said that this was a compromise so that the Democratic Party of Socialists, the European Union and the URA would vote for the budget.

"This budget item has grown from a million to another 150.000,00 euros in a few days. This is a 'compromise' by which DPS, ES and URA will support the budget. And these 150k will be distributed to 22 registered religious organizations, which means that these three parties will raise their hand to pay other religious organizations 6.818,00 euros each in order to stay in office, and MCP 1.000.000,00 euros. Truly great sacrifices by these 'state-building' parties, especially when we know that they lost power in 2020 due to religious issues. All of this will be supported by projects. Not to mention their complaints about the state budget, the collapse of the healthcare system, the lack of medicines and basic medical equipment, party employment, etc. There is no difference at all. Happy project offices to you, Milović and Tičić," Zenović wrote on Facebook.