Centre for Civic Education (CCE) points out that institutional cooperation between the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (MASA) and the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (CASA) remains insufficiently developed, particularly in view of the outstanding bilateral issues between Montenegro and Croatia and the fact that these may affect the final stage of Montenegro’s negotiations with the European Union.
According to MASA’s 2024 Yearbook, and as CCE has previously drawn public attention to, MASA has signed bilateral agreements with as many as 31 academies from the region, Europe and the wider world, including the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB), but not with CASA. More precisely, Croatia is the only state that emerged from the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia whose academy does not have a bilateral cooperation agreement with MASA. MASA has such agreements with the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA), the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ANUBiH), the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU), the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), and the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo (ASAK). MASA also has an agreement with the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republika Srpska (ANURS).
The absence of institutionalised cooperation with CASA is difficult to understand at a time when the two countries share a common European perspective, while also facing a number of outstanding issues to which their academic communities could make an important contribution. An agreement in itself is, of course, no guarantee of substantive cooperation, but its absence points to an avenue for cooperation that has remained unused for years. When it comes to foreign members of MASA, the recently deceased Dr Ivo Šlaus and Dr Milivoj Solar were the only members of CASA who were also foreign members of MASA. Šlaus was elected to MASA on 15 December 2006, and Solar on 29 November 2011.
CCE previously requested from MASA information on all activities, projects and other forms of cooperation with CASA in the period from 1 January 2020 to 9 June 2026, including supporting documentation, reports, decisions and financial data. In its response, MASA stated that it “did not carry out activities of cooperation with CASA at the institutional level to which your request refers”.
However, the latest available MASA Yearbook records certain contacts with Croatian academic and professional circles. During 2024, a lecture on transplantation surgery was delivered by Prof. Dr Željko Kaštelan of CASA; a MASA delegation visited the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography (LZMK) in Zagreb, where it met with Dr Bruno Kragić, Director General of the Institute and Editor-in-Chief of the Croatian Encyclopaedia; and a professional workshop on lexicographic editing was conducted by Dr Zdenko Jecić and MSc Ozana Martinčić. In its Yearbook, MASA also highlighted the professional support it receives from LZMK, particularly through the Institute’s experience in producing the Croatian Encyclopaedia.
In the same year, the Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia to Montenegro, Veselko Grubišić, visited MASA on the occasion of the scientific lecture Croatian Photographers and Montenegro, delivered on 15 April by Prof. Dr Maja Đurić. Thus, contacts do exist, but they remain limited, MASA does not emphasise them, and they have not developed into systematic institutional cooperation. It is precisely these existing links that should be used as a basis for more substantive dialogue between MASA and CASA.
This issue carries particular weight in light of CASA’s May 2022 document, Contributions to the Protection of Croatian National Interests in the Negotiations of the Republic of Croatia with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia Regarding Their Accession to the European Union. According to media reports, the document had previously been sent to Croatian President Zoran Milanović, Speaker of the Croatian Parliament Gordan Jandroković, and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. The section relating to Montenegro contains a number of demands, including guaranteed seats for Croats in the Parliament of Montenegro, final border demarcation, compliance with obligations arising from signed agreements and respect for the rights of the Croatian minority, payment of war reparations, particularly for damage to cultural heritage, the return of removed cultural property, an apology, as well as environmental and energy-related issues. On 1 June 2022, MASA responded with a statement in which it did not address the demands contained in the document individually, but assessed that such an approach was not “a path towards dialogue between our states, societies and nations, which should be based on the European values to which we aspire”. At the same time, MASA emphasised that Croatian support was valuable and stated that it remained open to dialogue based on equality and mutual respect. However, there is no publicly available information indicating that this statement was followed by structured dialogue between the two academies specifically on the issues raised at the time.
This is even more significant today. After Montenegro failed to close Chapter 31 in December 2024, while outstanding bilateral issues with Croatia remained part of the political context of European integration, it is no longer sufficient for MASA to remain merely declaratively “open to dialogue”. It is time for it to actively initiate that dialogue.
MASA cannot and should not replace the Government and diplomatic channels in resolving interstate issues. However, as an institution that brings together a significant part of the academic and professional community, it can offer expertise, create space for discussion on sensitive historical and identity-related issues, and build channels of communication that are not burdened by day-to-day politics. This is precisely where academic diplomacy can provide added value.
Membership in the European Union remains Montenegro’s strategic priority and enjoys strong support among citizens. It is therefore difficult to justify leaving unused, in the final stage of the accession negotiations, a channel of cooperation with the academy of a neighbouring EU Member State with which Montenegro has outstanding issues.
CCE calls on the Presidency of MASA to elevate existing contacts with Croatian academic and professional circles to the institutional level, initiate substantive dialogue with CASA, and place its expertise more actively at the service of resolving outstanding issues between Montenegro and Croatia. In the final stage of European integration, Montenegro needs every credible channel of dialogue, and the academic one should be no exception.
Sara Čabarkapa, Active Citizenship Programme Coordinator