Montenegro after the citizenship programme closed

Montenegro ran a citizenship-by-investment programme and closed it at the end of 2022. The closure was a condition of its European accession conversation, which is the useful part of the story: the programme did not fail commercially, it was traded away.

What that leaves

• Temporary residence on ordinary grounds — property ownership, company ownership with employment, employment, study, family — renewed annually.
• Permanent residence after a qualifying period of continuous temporary residence.
• Citizenship after a long period, with a language requirement and, importantly, a requirement to renounce the previous citizenship in the ordinary case.

The property route is the one most buyers use: ownership supports a residence permit, renewed each year, with the usual condition that the basis has to persist.

The renunciation point

Montenegro does not generally permit dual citizenship for naturalised citizens. Anyone treating Montenegrin residence as a slow route to a second passport should read that sentence twice: at the end of it, in the ordinary case, you have one passport again rather than two.

That single condition removes the country from consideration for most people whose objective is a second citizenship rather than a place to live.

What Montenegro is actually good for

• A place on the Adriatic with a euro currency, low costs by European standards, and a genuine coastline.
• A residence permit that is straightforward to obtain and renew while you own property.
• Proximity to the EU without EU tax and reporting.

What to watch

Accession changes things — for the better on institutions and infrastructure, and for the seller of a property bought cheaply beforehand. It also brings EU rules on everything from construction standards to reporting. The timeline for that is political and has moved before, so it belongs in a plan as a possibility rather than as a date.