Montenegro Gave Same-Sex Couples Partnerships in 2021. It's Still Updating the Laws Needed to Make Them Work.

When Montenegro’s Law on Life Partnership of Persons of the Same Sex took effect in July 2021, it made the country the first in the Western Balkans’ EU-accession group to legally recognize same-sex couples. That was a real achievement in a region where most governments still recognize nothing. But a partnership law only works if the rest of the legal system knows it exists, and in Montenegro much of it still doesn’t.

That is the gap the government is now trying to close. This summer it sent Parliament a package of amendments to five laws, under urgent procedure, meant to bring the rest of the legal code in line with the partnership law. It is not a headline-grabbing reform. For couples trying to live under the 2021 law, though, it covers some of the most practical questions: whether a foreign partner can become a citizen, whether a couple can register a shared address, and whether the state’s own records show that the partnership exists.

What the package would change

According to the government’s proposals, reported by Montenegrin outlet CdM, the package covers five laws.

Citizenship. The biggest change would allow someone in a life partnership with a Montenegrin citizen to apply for citizenship “under the same conditions that apply to married spouses.” The current law recognizes marriage to a Montenegrin as grounds for naturalization, but not a registered partnership. For binational couples, that difference decides whether the foreign partner has a path to staying long term.

Residence registration. Amendments to the law on residence registers would let partners register their residence, or change it, at their partner’s address, “as married and unmarried spouses already can,” in the government’s words. The partnership would also be recorded in residence records.

The central population register. The national register would record when a partnership is formed and when it ends, alongside the marital status data it already holds.

Surnames. Partners could agree to change their surname when they register a partnership, and keep it or go back to their previous name if the partnership ends. Married couples already have these rules.

Civil registers. Partnerships would be entered in the birth register, and the death register would record a surviving life partner.

The government says the changes need no new budget money and no new secondary legislation. The package was sent to Parliament in July. The political calendar has been crowded since, and we have not been able to confirm a final vote as of this writing.

Why it’s happening now: Chapter 23

The government is open about the reason. It says passing these changes is necessary to meet the closing benchmarks of Chapter 23 (Judiciary and Fundamental Rights) in Montenegro’s EU accession talks. It also notes that the European Commission has repeatedly pointed to the need to improve how anti-discrimination rules and LGBTIQ rights are implemented.

That explains the timing, and it also shows the limits. Much of the recent progress on LGBTQ+ rights in the region has been driven by the EU accession process, and TrueQueer has written about the pattern across the region. Laws get fixed when Brussels makes them a condition of progress. Whether the reforms mean anything in daily life depends on the clerks, police officers and registry officials who have to apply them.

A long delay

LGBTQ+ organizations have been asking for this for years. In January 2025, the Centre for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG) reported that Queer Montenegro, Juventas and Asocijacija Spektra had sent the government an initiative three years earlier. It identified 27 laws and 14 bylaws that needed to be aligned before the partnership law could fully apply. “Nothing was done,” Queer Montenegro director Staša Baštrica told CIN-CG at the time. She said partnered couples still faced unequal treatment in citizenship, inheritance, health care and other areas.

CIN-CG also reported that more than 100 same-sex partnerships had been registered since the law took effect. That is a modest number in a country of about 620,000 people, but each of those couples has had to deal with a system that often didn’t recognize them.

What the package leaves out

Even if every amendment passes, important gaps remain. Montenegro’s constitution defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman, which is why the 2020 law created “life partnership” instead of marriage. Same-sex couples still cannot adopt children, and the law does not recognize joint parenthood. Danijel Kalezić, who worked on the original draft, also pointed CIN-CG to another gap: unlike Croatia’s law, Montenegro’s does not recognize long-term couples who live together without registering.

Montenegro also has a deeper problem with attitudes. Its overall picture on LGBTQ+ rights combines a strong framework on paper with serious problems in how laws are applied. Montenegro Pride is expected in Podgorica in October, as in recent years, and organizers are once again trying to turn legal promises into everyday safety.

Why it matters

For LGBTQ+ people in Montenegro, and for couples with one Montenegrin partner who are thinking about settling there, the package is the kind of reform that rarely makes news but changes daily life. It decides whether registering an address is routine or a fight, and whether a partner can eventually become a citizen. Jeff and Zachary will be based in Podgorica this winter, and they will be watching how the reforms work in practice.

Montenegro was the first in its neighborhood to recognize same-sex couples. Five years on, it is still passing the laws that would let that recognition work in practice.

Sources: CdM (English); CdM; CIN-CG. Photo: Avi1111, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.