Aquisição por tratado internacional/dupla cidadania bilateral

ME-BIL-01 is Montenegro's acquisition-by-international-treaty route under Article 18 of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship, together with the Article 18(2) gateway to lawful dual citizenship under a reciprocal bilateral agreement. Article 18(1) is one of the four enumerated modes of acquiring Montenegrin citizenship (Art 4(4): 'po međunarodnim ugovorima i sporazumima' — by international treaties and agreements), alongside origin, birth on territory, and admission. Article 18(2) adds that such a treaty MAY establish dual citizenship, but only on a condition of reciprocity. This matters enormously in the Montenegrin system because the default rule is strict single allegiance: under Art 24(1)(1) an adult Montenegrin who voluntarily acquires a foreign citizenship loses Montenegrin citizenship ex lege — EXCEPT in the case provided by Art 18(2). The Art 18(2) reciprocal-treaty mechanism is therefore the SOLE statutory gateway through which a post-independence acquirer could lawfully hold both Montenegrin and a foreign citizenship. The critical operative finding, however, is that this gateway is statutory-but-HOLLOW: as of 2026 the only bilateral citizenship agreement Montenegro has concluded is with North Macedonia (signed 6 March 2009), and that agreement does NOT regulate the acquisition or loss of nationality — so it does not operationalize any dual-citizenship pathway. No nationality-regulating bilateral treaty is in force, no Montenegro-Serbia agreement exists despite intermittent negotiations since ~2008, and Montenegro's reservation to Article 16 of the European Convention on Nationality preserves its renunciation requirement. The route is thus documented as a real statutory mode whose dual-citizenship limb is currently dormant/inoperative; the only persons lawfully holding dual citizenship by right are pre-independence transitional holders under the Constitutional Implementation Act, not Art 18(2) beneficiaries.

The governing article is Article 18, in the acquisition chapter, section 4 ('Sticanje crnogorskog državljanstva po međunarodnim ugovorima i sporazumima'). Native operative text, Article 18(1): 'Crnogorsko državljanstvo može se steći na osnovu ratifikovanih međunarodnih ugovora ili sporazuma koje je zaključila Crna Gora' — Montenegrin citizenship may be acquired on the basis of ratified international treaties or agreements concluded by Montenegro. Article 18(2): 'Međunarodnim ugovorima i sporazumima iz stava 1 ovog člana može se ustanoviti dvojno državljanstvo, pod uslovom uzajamnosti' — by such treaties/agreements dual citizenship MAY be established, on condition of reciprocity. Three further provisions complete the legal basis. (a) Article 2 (domestic-primacy hinge): 'A Montenegrin citizen who also has the citizenship of another country is considered a Montenegrin citizen in proceedings before the Montenegrin authorities, unless otherwise determined by ratified international treaties' — treaties can displace the default single-allegiance treatment, which is precisely what an Art 18(2) treaty would do. (b) Article 24(1)(1) (the loss-side carve-out): native 'je dobrovoljno stekao državljanstvo druge države, osim u slučaju predviđenom članom 18 stav 2 ovog zakona' — voluntary acquisition of a foreign citizenship triggers ex-lege loss EXCEPT in the Art 18(2) case. (c) Article 25 (loss-by-treaty mirror): 'Crnogorsko državljanstvo može se izgubiti po međunarodnim ugovorima ili sporazumima koje je zaključila Crna Gora' — the loss-side counterpart, currently dormant absent a nationality-regulating treaty. Transitional anchor: the Constitutional Implementation Act (2007) Art 12 governs the pre/post-independence dual-citizenship cohorts (see era_context) and is the conceptual reference point for the unresolved Serbia negotiations. Amendment lineage: Art 18 has stood unchanged across /2008 · 40/2010 · 28/2011 · 46/2011 · 20/2014 · 54/2016 · 73/2019 · 77/2024 (77/2024 touched only Art 37).