Representatives of the Montenegrin Party in Serbia today asked the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, to "dedicate and commit" to the realization of the constitutional rights of the Montenegrin national minority to use the language in official use.
The Montenegrin party reacted to Prime Minister Brnabić's statement after the meeting in Podgorica with the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dusko Marković, that she "expects respect for the rights of Serbs, their language, identity and cultural heritage in that country".
In the press release, the CP reminded Brnabić that in the municipality of Vrbas, the municipal management avoids introducing the Montenegrin language into official use, in addition to the existing Serbian, Hungarian and Ruthenian, even though all the conditions prescribed by law have been met.
On June 13 this year, that party sent a new request to the municipal authorities for the introduction of the Montenegrin language into official use.
The Law on the Official Use of Languages and Scripts establishes the obligation of the local self-government to introduce into equal official use the language and script of the national minority whose percentage in the total number of inhabitants in its territory reaches 15 percent.
According to the party's announcement, according to the results of the last population census from 2011, 7.353 members of the Montenegrin community live in the municipality of Vrbas, which is 17,5 percent of the total population.
"There is no response from the municipality of Vrbas yet, identical to the previous requests," the announcement reads, and requests were submitted from 2010 until today by representatives of the Association of Montenegrins of Serbia "Krstaš" in addition to the Montenegrin Party.
Apart from Vrbas, the only municipality in Serbia where the legally prescribed conditions for the introduction of the Montenegrin language into official use are met is the municipality of Mali Iđoš, which did so in 2010 at the request of the "Krstaš" association.
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