Naturalización de refugiados

ME-SPC-03 is the naturalization of a recognised refugee (local: "Prijem izbjeglice"), a tailored admission track under Article 13 of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship. It is available to a person who has been granted refugee status in Montenegro under the separate asylum legislation (the Law on International Protection), and it allows that person to acquire citizenship by admission ("prijem") on a reduced condition set. The route does NOT confer citizenship automatically or as an incident of refugee status; it is a distinct nationality step requiring its own admission decision — the dual-track principle that separates protection status (asylum) from nationality (this route). Under Article 13 the refugee must satisfy Article 8(1) items 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 — i.e. the FULL ordinary condition set EXCEPT item 4 (secured accommodation/income) and item 6 (Montenegrin-language knowledge), which are waived. Critically, the refugee track is LESS generous than the stateless track (Art 14): it RETAINS item 2, the release from prior citizenship, and it RETAINS item 3, the ten years of legal continuous residence (it is not a reduced-residence route). Compared with the facilitative norm of Article 34 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Montenegro's retention of the release-of-citizenship requirement (item 2) is notable, since refugees frequently cannot safely approach their country of origin to obtain release — although Art 8(2) may relieve this where the refugee is also effectively stateless or would lose the foreign citizenship on admission. The route is operative_today and Article 13 was unchanged by the 77/2024 amendment.

The governing provision is Article 13, a single-sentence rule. Native text (ME-PRIMARY-01): "Lice kojem je, u skladu sa zakonom kojim se uređuje azil, priznat status izbjeglice u Crnoj Gori može steći crnogorsko državljanstvo prijemom ako ispunjava uslove iz člana 8 stav 1. tač. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 i 8 ovog zakona." The consolidated EN rendering (ME-PRIMARY-01e Art 13): "A person who has been recognised a refugee status in Montenegro, by the procedure envisaged by the Law on Asylum, may be granted Montenegrin citizenship if he or she fulfils requirements referred to in Article 8 paragraph 1 items 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 of this Law." The article incorporates two external legal anchors: first, the predicate refugee status, which is conferred under the asylum law (the Law on International Protection), not under the Citizenship Law — establishing the dual-track structure; second, the Article 8 condition catalogue, from which it subtracts only items 4 and 6. Article 13 should also be read with Article 8(2), which may disapply the otherwise-retained release-of-citizenship condition (item 2) where the refugee is stateless, would lose the foreign citizenship on admission, or was refused release for an unregulated military obligation and signs a renunciation statement. Implementation runs through the ordinary procedural chain (Arts 27-31) and the Government criteria for the retained conditions (Art 17 — criteria for items 3 and 7, via the Odluka o kriterijumima). Amendment history: Article 13 has been stable across the gazette cascade (13/2008 through 77/2024) and was unchanged by 77/2024, so the items-1,2,3,5,7,8 formula is current as of 2026.