Montenegro's Cabinet session

Podgorica, Montenegro (19 February 2015) – At today’s session, the Government of Montenegro approved the Revised action plans for negotiating chapters 23 and 24. In order to define more specific medium-term and long-term priorities, the revised plans contain an overview of activities within a single process, which enable a planned and proactive approach to meeting commitments, through the achievement of clearly defined objectives. During the revision process, the objectives remained unchanged and they were defined on the basis of clear recommendations from the Screening Report and the screening process of harmonisation of the Montenegrin legal system with the EU acquis. The Cabinet emphasised that Montenegro, following the implementation of legal reforms in these areas, will have very demanding phase of implementing new system solutions, including synchronised actions of all branches of power and maximum responsibility of the competent institutions, in line with the prescribed powers and duties.

Starting from the new methodological approach of the Western Balkans Investment Framework, the Government adopted the Decision on establishing the National Investment Commission, headed by the prime minister, the mechanism through which EU financial support for the region is to be implemented. The new methodological framework provides the region with more opportunities to decide on the priority projects to be implemented. Grants from EU funds of about EUR 1 billion will be used for the preparation of projects documentation and implementation of infrastructure projects of regional significance.

Today’s session adopted the information on funding scientific research in 2015. It was pointed out that scientific research activities in 2015 will be funded from multiple sources in the amount of EUR 6,321,824, which makes an increase of 32.62% compared to 2014.

As part of the active policy aimed at consolidating public finance, the Government adopted the Information on Municipal Debt Restructuring. The government approved the rescheduling of tax debt for taxes and contributions on salaries of employees, as well as the rescheduling of liabilities based on the final allocation of funds from the Equalisation Fund for the period 2009-2013. Debt rescheduling agreements are to be signed with municiplities, together with the obligation to comply them with the plan of internal reorganisation of the public sector.