By: Mélodie Tran Thuan
As Montenegro moves closer to the European Union, the disputes inherited from the Yugoslav wars continue to weigh on its relations with Croatia. But behind the official positions, what do Croatians really think about their neighbour’s accession? From Dubrovnik to Zagreb, from the generations who lived through the war to those born afterwards, their accounts reveal very different attitudes towards the past – ranging from mistrust and pragmatism to resentment and a desire to move on. Through their stories, a broader question emerges: can European integration truly transcend the boundaries of memory?
In Dubrovnik, the Past Is Never Far Away
This is my second visit to Dubrovnik, and yet I’m still just as blown away. With its almost perfectly preserved medieval ramparts, its orange-tiled roofs contrasting with the turquoise blue of the sea, and its narrow streets paved with white marble, the old town – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – offers an almost surreal scene. I am participating in the 54th summer seminar of the Zagreb School of Slavic Studies, an annual programme dedicated to Croatian language, literature and culture, which brings together students, professors and researchers from all over the world in Dubrovnik.
Croatia regularly expresses its support for Montenegro’s accession to the Union. However, this support remains conditional upon the resolution of several bilateral disputes stemming from the Yugoslav Wars. In particular, Zagreb is calling on Podgorica to settle the issue of compensation owed to former Croatian prisoners held in camp in Montenegro, to continue the search for the 14 people still missing since the Croatian Homeland War, to ensure the effective prosecution of war crimes, to resolve disputes concerning property confiscated from Croatian families, to demarcate the maritime border between the two countries, and to return the training ship Jadran. Croatia also calls for the preservation of the commemorative plaque installed at the site of the former Morinj camp in Montenegro, where hundreds of Croats were detained from 1991–1992.
But what do the Croatians themselves think? After everything that has happened, would they be prepared to see Montenegro join the big European family? I decided to ask them directly about these issues.
Disclaimer: To protect the anonymity of those interviewed, all first names have been changed. The comments quoted in this article reflect their own views and should not be interpreted as reflecting the author’s position.
The Obstacles on Montenegro’s Path to EU Membership are Temporary
The next day, I set off for Lokrum, an island situated just a few hundred metres from Dubrovnik. On this lush nature reserve, which once belonged to the Habsburgs before being ceded to Yugoslavia in 1919, peacocks roam freely amongst the trees and rocks. It is here that I meet Šimun, the owner of a restaurant on the island, to discuss Montenegro’s European future.
With greying hair and steel-blue eyes, Šimun exudes a calm self-assurance. You might also think he’s a great scholar of political affairs, as he tells me straight away, with an almost theatrical seriousness: “Listen carefully to me, okay? I’m a big expert on thistopic.” Clearly, he’s not unhappy to be asked for his opinion.
His opening words are warm: “First of all, Montenegrins will always be welcome in Croatia.” He explains that many Montenegrins come to work in Dubrovnik and the surrounding area, particularly in tourism and the restaurant industry. In fact, he employs several Montenegrins in his own team. He points to his head chef, who has just come out of the kitchens for a cigarette break. “He is from Podgorica,” he adds after I told him that I lived in the Montenegrin capital for a few months. Returning to my question, Šimun explains to me that, currently, there are three reasons why he cannot fully support Montenegro’s accession to the EU. Two of these arguments are, in fact, the same as those put forward by the Croatian government.
The first concerns the Jadran, the three-masted ship that serves as a training vessel and has for years been the subject of a dispute between Croatia and Montenegro. “Montenegro must return the Jadran to Croatia,” Šimun leaves little room for doubt. Next comes the question of borders. Šimun mentions the territorial dispute between the two countries, particularly concerning the Prevlaka peninsula and access to the Bay of Kotor. To hear him tell it, here too, the Croatian position should prevail. But that’s nothing, he says, compared to the third problem: Montenegro’s internal issues. He is referring here to the issue of Serbian identity within the country. To illustrate his argument, he points to two young waiters in his restaurant. They are standing quietly behind the bar, watching the customers from a distance. “See those two guys over there? They’re from Montenegro too. They’re good lads, verymuch hard-workers. And they’re two completely different people,” he says. I look at the two seemingly similar men, intrigued. “One identifies as Montenegrin and considers Montenegro to be his country. The other identifies as a Serb from Montenegro, believes that Montenegro is a Serbian region, and that it should never have seceded in 2006,” Šimun reveals to me that. He goes on to remind me that Montenegro is a country made up of several communities: “There are Albanians… Bosniaks, who mind their own business. Then there are the Serbs…”
With his hand on his heart, he is keen to point out first and foremost that he harbours no personal animosity towards Serbs or Montenegrins: the past, he assures me, is now behind him. And anyway, frankly, at his age, there’s no point in hating anyone anymore. But that does not prevent him from having reservations. In particular, he notes that many Serbs in Montenegro do not recognise the legitimacy of the Montenegrin state. Under these circumstances, he believes, the country cannot yet claim to be ready to join the EU. Then, almost jokingly, he adds: “As if the EU didn’t have enough problems at the moment…”
Eventually, Šimun remains optimistic. As far as he is concerned, accession is merely a matter of time. “I think it will all work out and that they’ll join the EU in 2028, or 2029 at the latest,” he predicts. I then ask him what he’ll do on the day Montenegro officially becomes a member of the European Union. His reply comes without the slightest hesitation: “I will be celebrating!”
Without Having Lived Through the War, Some Young People Remain Prisoners of the Past
A few days later, in the early afternoon, I have a bit of free time before setting off on an excursion to Trsteno. I take the opportunity to have a chat with Marko, a young barman whose left arm is completely covered in tattoos – amongst the designs, the word “Dubrovnik” catches my eye. We are just a stone’s throw from the Old Town. At first he hesitates, but very quickly I hardly need to ask any questions as Marko clearly has a lot to say. As the conversation progresses, I learn that he wasn’t born yet during the siege of Dubrovnik in 1991–1992. He can’t therefore be more than 34 years old. The siege itself lasted eight months; the bombardments left an indelible mark on the city and on the collective memory of its inhabitants.
When I ask him whether, as a Croat, he is in favour of Montenegro joining the EU, his answer takes me by surprise: “I honestly think our people aren’t in favour, because when we joined the European Union, nothing good happened. Only bad things.” For example, he cites the rise in crime since Croatia joined the EU. A colleague standing next to him nods in agreement and also emphasises the increase in criminality before disappearing into the kitchen. I am very surprised, because until now I had not met a single Croatian willing to admit that the EU has not brought any real benefits to their country.
Then she says that Montenegrins themselves often feel that Croatia does not want Montenegro to join the EU. “Montenegro now wants to join the European Union. They [the Montenegrins] say Croatia isn’t really interested in that to begin with, but the problem is [our] people who are in power,” he states. “Well, they’re really not in favour of it. Everything keeps dragging on over that, unfortunately,” he elaborates.
Afterwards, I ask him about his relations with the Montenegrins, in particular whether he had any professional or personal contacts with them. He replied, in an irritated tone, that he knows several people from Montenegro – as well as from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina – who come to work in Dubrovnik whilst openly criticising Croatia: “They come here, earn money, then go back home.” What particularly irritates him is hearing them badmouth the city where he grew up: “They say Dubrovnik is a disaster… But they still work here.”
“I’ve been to Podgorica, I’ve been to Serbia. I don’t have any problems with them. But certain people look at you with hatred,” he is quick to add. He mentions an evening spent in a nightclub in Podgorica with a friend. He was wearing a shirt that covered his tattoo. When he rolled up his sleeve, five men stared at him. “They were staring at me as if they were going to beat me up. They ordered me, ‘Pull your shirt sleeve down.’ I pulled it down, so that was that.” Fortunately, the situation ended there, but what would have happened if he had refused to listen to them?
He goes on to say that in Dubrovnik, too, tensions can flare up again. He recounts how, recently, a car with Belgrade number plates was destroyed following a trivial altercation between two men. One of them is said to have snapped at the other: “Why are you looking at me like this?,” before the other grabbed a piece of wood and smashed the car’s headlights to pieces. It just shows that a single glance is enough to be perceived as a provocation.
War is, obviously, not a subject he finds easy to discuss, but he eventually does talk about it. His late father fought during the Homeland War, but hardly ever spoke of it. “Thank goodness,” whispers Marko. Only one sentence stayed with him: his father told him that no one was spared, neither children nor women. Marko makes this comparison: “What happened in Chernobyl was nothing compared with what happened here [in Croatia].” He then advises me to visit the Museum of the Homeland War at the top of Mount Srđ – I was there a few days earlier: “I don’t know whether you’ve been to that museum. That’s what it was like, every day.”
Yet Marko does not want these conflicts to drag on indefinitely. “There are idiots everywhere. Let’s be clear about that,” he sighs.Speaking of the weight of the past on the younger generation, he notes, however, that some young people remain “stuck” in the past, even without having experienced war themselves: “When it comes to young people, they stay stuck too much, both on the Croatian side and on theirs. They’re stuck in that time too much.” He then shares with me that a friend from Belgrade advised him against travelling to the Serbian capital in his own car: “I asked him whether I could take my car there. He said, ‘You know, Dubrovnik number plates, it’s not a good idea’…”
“What happened, happened. I mean, of course, all sorts of things happened, and all respect to the people who went through it. But going back to it now, it’s not worth it. It goes round in circles,” Marko concludes.
In a way, I feel that talking with me did him some good. The next day, when a German classmate from my summer school – who witnessed our conversation – and I went back to order a coffee, Marko told us that this time, it was on him. Over the following days, whenever I bumped into him, he would give me a big smile and greet me in French.
The Less Montenegro Is Tied to Serbia, the Fewer Problems Croatia Will Have
In early September, I met Amalija, aged 57. Short but stocky, she grew up in a small village a few kilometres from Ogulin, in Karlovac County. Nestled at the foot of the legendary Mount Klek, Ogulin is known for the many legends and stories surrounding its landscapes. But on this specific day, it is Amalija’s story that I want to hear. Amalija warns me right from the start, though: she doesn’t particularly like expressing her opinions so directly, because she is aware that they can cause upset. “I’m brutally honest and, inevitably, I end up offending someone,” she admits. Yet she is convinced that this frankness is not far removed from what many others think. According to her, many people share some of her views but prefer to stay silent: “Instead, they keep quiet, and pretend and make everything sound nice and polite.”
Amalija tells me that she is in favour of Montenegro joining the EU. “Why? Honestly, because they have always been tied to Serbia, so that they can break away from Serbia and we can have fewer problems. The less Serbia has to do with Montenegro, the fewer problems we’ll have”, she explains. As for whether Montenegro will succeed in joining the EU, she is not very concerned about that. “Personally, I have nothing against Montenegrins, but I haven’t socialised with them either,” she continues. As she explains, if Serbs are like Montenegrins – and she doesn’t see them as entirely the same, but does associate them with one another – then her own attitude is like the way her mother-in-law treated her: “Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.”
Amalija then mentions the Yugoslav era and takes a very critical view of Tito’s regime. She recalls that, as a child, she did not yet see him in that light: “At the time, I didn’t think that way, even though, instinctively, I didn’t particularly like that way of life.” As an adult, she says she came to realise that Tito was “a dictator” and that life in Yugoslavia was organised according to his rules: “We had to behave as prescribed… So, if it hadn’t been for Tito, if it hadn’t been for Yugoslavia, perhaps we would have slaughtered one another even sooner.”
When I ask her about the events of the war, Amalija makes no secret of the fact that, quite honestly, she had expected Montenegro to attack Dubrovnik. For her, it was a matter of course. What she didn’t expect, however, came later. She says she was “very surprised” when Montenegro, then under the presidency of Filip Vujanović, distanced itself from Serbia in 2006: “That’s when I began to change my opinion of Montenegro a little for the better.”
But she immediately tempers this enthusiasm with a word of warning: “Someone who does something nasty to you once in your life will do something nasty to you again. So I don’t trust them one hundred per cent.” She also wonders what is really driving the current reconciliation. Perhaps, she suggests, the Montenegrins simply have an interest, for the time being, in building closer ties with the Croats. Perhaps they have fallen out with the Serbs and are now seeking other allies as they move closer to the EU. At present, relations are fairly good. But for how long? “I’m a very wary person, especially when you look at the statistics, history and everything that’s happened before,” she says.
I then ask her whether, in her view, Montenegrin society has sufficiently acknowledged the role the country played in the war. She shrugs: “They have their problems, we have ours, and… They attacked Dubrovnik, they fired on Dubrovnik. So why would I think about them when I don’t like them, when I can’t stand them? They were our enemies […].” She believes that some of them were, at the time, in favour of the attack on Dubrovnik and Croatia, and even of the idea of seizing part of the Croatian coastline. She feels that they approved of what was happening and were delighted to see Serbia attacking Croatia. It is primarily for this reason, she explains, that she still does not trust them. And what needs to be done to turn the page? She replies sharply: “The page will never be turned because deep down, we’ll still be enemies.” She believes that peace is only temporary and that history will eventually repeat itself: “One day, war will break out all over again […]. In a hundred years or so, I think they’ll all slaughter one another again.”
EU Membership Is Only a Problem If Podgorica Opposes Zagreb
In Zagreb, I meet Vlatko, a 30-year-old software engineer. When I present him with the list of six issues that Croatia cites to justify its veto on Montenegro’s accession to the EU, he sighs in exasperation. Two of these demands may seem legitimate – notably the dispute over the Prevlaka maritime border – but for him, the rest is utter nonsense: “They’ll list these retarded reasons instead of anything meaningful.”
Above all, Vlatko refuses to let the past dictate the future: “I do not care for past grievances. Let’s just move on.” However, he acknowledges that, in a city like Dubrovnik, given its particular history during the war, it may be more difficult for some residents to put their resentment behind them.
Furthermore, his stance on Montenegro’s accession to the EU is not a romantic pro-European plea. “I mean, what do we gain? What do we lose? […] Do we get cheaper oil?,” he sums it up with practical questions. In his view, Montenegro’s accession should only pose a problem if the country were to systematically oppose Croatian interests once it became a member. “If they’re likely to vote against Croatian interests, then block them. If not, promote them. Seems simple,” he says. “I’m trying to see the practical implications from my zero understanding. I suspect it’s just a ploy to gain something from them. […] ‘Oh wow, we are so understanding!’,” he even adopts an ironic tone when talking about the diplomatic “game”.
“I have no attachment to any party or anything; I don’t follow Croatian politics or news at all. […] I don’t even have any relationswith Montenegrins,” he clarifies. With his forthright manner, Vlatko embodies those thousands of young Croatian city-dwellers born after the war, who barely hear of Montenegro – or at least not since the Montenegrin series Budva on the Sea Foam.
Ultimately, his words always boil down to the same question: what do we have to gain or lose from this enlargement? For Vlatko, the answer is simple and pragmatic. Perhaps that is enough to understand the current unease: as long as he does not see that Montenegro is not a threat to Croatia, why persist with a veto that benefits no one?
The author is a master’s student in Central European Studies at Sorbonne University in Paris and an international intern at the Centre for Civic Education (CCE).