Practice vs Reality in Montenegro – Part 1

Expectations Meet Reality

You’ve decided to move to Montenegro, you have all your papers for your residence permit, you’ve met all the requirements, even hired a consultant. And you go to submit your application, only to find out on the spot that you need a document no one mentioned, or the one you have is not good. Or, you’ve been told the resolution deadline for a residence permit is 15 days, but it takes 30, or even 40.

In other situations, you read that you can be inscribed in property ownership documents in one month, but it takes much longer. Or you read that you can start building your house in no time once you acquire the urbanistic-technical conditions, only to find out it’s not that simple. And so on, and so on.

There are all kinds of situations in Montenegro where the rules and reality, or theory and reality, don’t match. And if you are thinking about moving here, investing, or starting a business, you need to be prepared for this. This can especially be a headache if you decide to do everything yourself.

Examples of Gaps 

Some of the most common practice vs theory gaps are:

• The public service is not always standardized in all municipalities. For example, the police will not interpret your residence permit documents the same way in every municipality.
• The internal instructions in an institution sometimes supersede the law or an official rulebook. This further means the rules may change.
• The deadlines are usually just theoretical and are exceeded.
• Some procedures and claims are not as straightforward. For example, VAT return for a company is simple in theory, but in practice, it takes a lot of time, and your accounting team will have a bunch of work until it’s done.
• It’s not as digitalized as they want you to believe. No need to explain this point too much 🙂
• Montenegro is business-friendly, but you’d be surprised by some procedures, especially when it comes to banking.

How to Build Realistic Expectations? 

So, besides good research and choosing the right service provider (if you don’t want to do it yourself), you need to adjust your expectations to be prepared for each scenario. In many cases, patience and understanding of the system reality are the keys.

Therefore, to prepare yourself and make better decisions, we recommend the following:

• Visit the country. It’s not enough to do online research.
• Talk to other expats who’ve already been through the process you’re interested in. And not just the ones from your country.
• Talk to locals who are not vested in your situation and have no interest in selling you anything.
• Talk to several service providers and ask the same set of questions, so you can validate your information and research.

We will post some specific examples in the coming weeks, so if you want to know more about the reality in Montenegro, visit our website regularly. Or, to get an insight in reality, feel free to contact us.