While the official Podgorica is about to be the next member of the European Union, so count on it already by the end of next year, a sobering will arrive from Berlin.
Chancellor Friedrich Mertz said almost in the same breath that Montenegro is "ready to join", that it has "mostly fulfilled all requirements" and that the European Union should therefore not wait, but expects Montenegro as a member - by the end of the decade.
Nevertheless, Radomir Kračković, editor-in-chief of Montenegrin Television Vijesti, sees the message primarily as an encouragement, because apparently Merc, as "the leader of one of the most powerful EU members", has the will to "push" enlargement.
"Before, we did not have such explicit statements from the level of the leaders of the most powerful member states. This is even more important if you bear in mind that Montenegro still has a lot of work to do, that is, it must close 15 out of 33 chapters and resolve difficult bilateral disputes with Croatia," Kračković told "Vreme".
It must be done.
Among the critics in Podgorica, he says, the mantra has become established that "Brussels is bringing us into the EU instead of us entering it ourselves." It is necessary, he says, to move from words to actions.
Kračković calculates like this - Montenegro can close all chapters in the first half of the next year. But then the painstaking process of ratification in the parliaments of all EU member states begins.
"It can take a couple of years," says this journalist, "which is why Mertz is also cautious in his statements, so he mentions the end of the decade as a time frame."
Here, Kračković believes, Merc himself "will have to play a significant role in lobbying and persuading skeptical members for Montenegro, so it is possible that with these statements he is already preparing the ground for that process."
Serbia will wait even longer
Apart from the dispute with Croatia, which has a number of demands related to the war in the 1990s and the final delimitation of the Prevlaka region, there are members of the European Union who think that the expansion to the Western Balkans should take place in a package.
More specifically, that it is not wise for Montenegro and Albania to enter before the largest country in the region, Serbia.
According to Deutsche Welle, this is exactly the background of Merc's statement that there will be no entry in the package but according to the criteria.
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