The Steering Committee of the Union of Municipalities has approved the text of the amendments to the Draft Law on Local Self-Government.

Members of the Steering Board of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro, consisting of mayors and presidents of Montenegrin municipalities, unanimously approved the text of the amendments to the Draft Law on Local Self-Government at a meeting held today.

As announced by the Union of Municipalities, a total of 45 amendments, which will be submitted to Montenegrin MPs, relate to numerous provisions in the proposed legal act that are contrary to the Constitution of Montenegro and the European Charter on Local Self-Government, in areas of importance for the closure of Chapters 23 and 24 in negotiations with the European Union, and which relate, among other things, to the right to local self-government, the right to autonomy, including fiscal, as well as the freedom to determine the administrative structure.

"The session of the Steering Board was attended by the Minister of Social Welfare, Family Care and Demography, Damir Gutić, who presented the solutions from the new Law on Amendments to the Law on Social and Child Protection. The heads of local governments, however, assessed that Article 154 of that law - which obliges municipalities to finance services that have been transferred to them, and which are part of the original competences of the state - is not in accordance with the Constitution, so they unanimously adopted a proposal to submit an initiative to the Constitutional Court for a review of constitutionality," the statement states.

The session also unanimously adopted and proposed initiatives to assess the constitutionality of the Forest Law and the Law on Audiovisual Media Services, and it was also decided to submit an Initiative to amend the Real Estate Tax Law.

The Report on the Financial Operations of the Association of Municipalities for 2025 with the Report of the Supervisory Board on the Control of the Material and Financial Operations of the Association for 2025, as well as a series of decisions ensuring the regular work and functioning of the association, also received unanimous support at the session.

"The green light was also given to the new Rulebook simplifying the procedure for distributing funds from the Union of Municipalities for the implementation of development projects of interest to local self-government units, then - the Methodology for supervising the implementation of regulations at the local level in special administrative areas and mapping corruption risks at the local level, as well as the Action Plan for the implementation of recommendations from the Analysis of risks in relation to corruption at the level of local self-governments," the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro concludes in a statement.