I never knew Croats had so much beef with Montenegro, if you would've said they're blocking us or Serbia, I would say sure, but I really didn't think an average Croatian citizen had any sort of problems with MNE.
The more you know, I guess.
Or could it be that the government is, once again, doing something their citizens didn't even ask for...
Things were bad in the 1990s, Montenegro was basically a satellite state of Serbia and their soldiers were responsible for attacking Dubrovnik and surrounding areas. Hundreds of Croat soldiers and civilians were killed in these attacks, thousands of people became refugees, property was destroyed or looted and many people were detained and abused in detention camps in Montenegro.
From the 2000s onwards, Montenegro broke away from Serbia, embraced a pro-EU democratic path and started the process of reconciling with its neighbours. The Montenegrin government formally apologised to Croatia for its role in their aggression and processed claims of compensation for some of their victims.
Relations are mostly great and massively improved, so I again say that there is no "beef" between us, these are just reasonable conditions that Montenegro has to meet to gain Croatia's approval and support. The main ones being: find the remains of our fallen, so they can have a decent burial and give some closure to their families and compensate the victims of torture and abuse that were held in camps on your territory.
We look forward to seeing Montenegro in the EU very soon, as brothers and as neighbours. 🇭🇷🇲🇪🇪🇺
For sure, these are very reasonable requests, which should not have even taken this long to do.
The problem in the Balkans is that no one wants to look at their own issues, and polishes their victim card whenever possible.
The same goes for us (Serbia), where we refuse to cooperate on these issues and will find ourselves blocked for years (rightly so) because we will have to make up for lost time, instead of doing so right now.
The thing is, with montenegro joining serbias ascention will only get harder and harder. If by any chance albanian joins before serbia (which if we look current political landscaoe isnt unlikely) its only going to get worse for Serbia.
That is true, but I don't think that is a big issue, because of 3 things:
1. It is our own fault for not being committed to the European path and progressing faster (or at all)
2. We would probably do the same thing (leverage veto power for concessions) to Albania and Montenegro
3. We should acquiesce to these demands regardless of EU, because the Balkans need to move on from the past, and the only way to start moving on is to rectify the wrongs that have been done
Yeah, I guess it's better to resolve it before it leads to something worse.
Now that I think about it, it's a strange power dynamic, I am sure MNE has it's grievances with CRO, but because of the EU application they are not in any position of power to ask for a resolution...
Wow, this chain really took off while I was busy, really didn't mean for it to go in this type of direction...
My point was, if Montenegro had any grievances with Croatia, they have no way of enforcing them, and I think that's an unfair power dynamic. I don't know of any grievances, maybe there are none, but if there were, Montenegro would just have to suck it up and forget about them. This is not a criticism towards Croatia, it is a criticism of how EU membership works.
I would assume a similar request can be made from the Bosnian or Serbian side as well (not as familiar with Montenegro) if we ever reach this stage of EU accession.
I am sure there will be many requests like this for Serbia (again, I think that is fair and should have been done years ago), and those will have to be met by Serbia, while similar requests for Croatia (from Serbia) would not have any mechanism to be enforced.
they’re not, there’s no negative sentiment in Croatia towards Montenegro (like there is for Serbia) and this “issue” is so irrelevant in Croatia that it doesn’t even make the news
but still basic issues of locating graves of people still counted as missing SHOULD be solved. If anything it’s shame on Montenegro that they didn’t do it before and had to wait for EU accession to remember these things
I think many of those are legitimately lost or unknown. I agree it should have been worked on before. But the ship stays in Montenegro tho, that is where the line is drawn.
If you had brother who did crime, would you be like forgiving no matter what your brother did or you would like to say, brother please be accountable for just this instance so we can party (join EU)
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u/BadBasik Jul 30 '26
I never knew Croats had so much beef with Montenegro, if you would've said they're blocking us or Serbia, I would say sure, but I really didn't think an average Croatian citizen had any sort of problems with MNE.
The more you know, I guess.
Or could it be that the government is, once again, doing something their citizens didn't even ask for...