Over the past 20 years, the Presidents of Montenegro have conferred a total of 200 state honours. However, there are still no clearly defined rules regarding who may be nominated, the criteria used to decide on recipients, or the merits on the basis of which individuals are awarded these honours, according to the findings of the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) publication High Honours, Unclear Rules – State Honours in Montenegro 2006–2026, authored by Aleksandra Mihaljević.
During two and a half terms in office, Filip Vujanović conferred 110 state honours, while Milo Đukanović awarded 48 during his single term. President Jakov Milatović has so far conferred 42 honours during his current term.
The key issue is not who received state honours or how many were awarded, but rather the fact that the procedure for granting them is not sufficiently regulated. Although the President exercises this authority in accordance with the Law on State Honours and Awards, the current legal framework does not specify who may nominate candidates, the criteria for assessing candidates’ merits, nor does it require the President to provide reasons for his decisions.
The analysis identifies three key shortcomings of the current system: there are no clearly prescribed criteria for assessing candidates’ merits, the nomination procedure is not regulated, and the President is under no obligation to provide reasons for awarding state honours. In addition, although an official register of recipients exists, it is not publicly available through a single electronic database.
Such a legal framework prevents citizens from verifying whether state honours have been awarded solely on the basis of merit, as the procedure is not grounded in clearly defined criteria but instead depends, to a significant extent, on the discretionary assessment of the President. The analysis also shows that the patterns of awarding honours changed across the mandates of the three Presidents, while the key regulatory shortcomings remained unchanged, confirming that this is a systemic rather than a personal issue.
CCE does not question the constitutional authority of the President of Montenegro to confer state honours. However, an authority of such importance should be accompanied by rules that strengthen transparency and public trust. State honours are not merely expressions of gratitude, but also convey the values that the state seeks to promote. Therefore, this institution cannot rely solely on trust in the President’s personal judgement, but must instead be based on rules that enable the public to understand and scrutinise the decision-making process.
A particular value of the analysis lies in its recommendations, which clearly distinguish between measures that can be implemented immediately through changes in existing practice and those requiring amendments to the Law on State Honours and Awards in order to achieve lasting improvements in the transparency and accountability of the state honours system.
CCE recommends that the Office of the President introduce the practice of publishing the reasoning behind every decision to confer a state honour and establish an advisory body to review nominations before a final decision is made. These measures could be introduced immediately, without legislative amendments, and would represent an important step towards greater transparency. This would, for the first time, provide the public with formally reasoned presidential decisions, instead of leaving the rationale for awards to be inferred solely from accompanying press releases issued by the President’s Office.
As a systemic solution, CCE proposes amendments to the Law on State Honours and Awards that would more precisely regulate the criteria for awarding honours, the nomination procedure, and establish a publicly accessible electronic register of all state honours awarded, accompanied by the reasoning for each decision. This would, for the first time, enable citizens to easily verify who received the country’s highest honours and on what grounds.
CCE calls on the President of Montenegro, the Office of the President, the Government of Montenegro, and the Ministry of Justice to give serious consideration to these recommendations in order to ensure that the system of state honours is regulated in a more transparent and accountable manner, consistent with its symbolic importance.
The publication also contains the first comprehensive overview ever compiled of all 200 recipients of state honours awarded in Montenegro between 2006 and 2026.
Milica Borozan, Project Assistant