Emigrant + 3rd-degree family admission

ME-DIA-01 is the emigrant and emigrant-family admission route (iseljenik i porodica do treceg stepena) under Art 10 of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship — the diaspora-facing path that lets a Montenegrin emigrant, and his or her relatives up to the third degree of kinship in the direct line, naturalize on a sharply reduced residence threshold. Like the marriage route (Art 11), it is a lex specialis to ordinary naturalization (Art 8): it uses Art 8's machinery but substitutes a two-year residence requirement and incorporates only a defined subset of the eight baseline conditions. Who qualifies: (a) a Montenegrin emigrant (crnogorski iseljenik), and (b) a member of that emigrant's family up to the third degree of kinship in the direct line (do treceg stepena srodstva u pravoj liniji), who resides in Montenegro legally and continuously for at least two years and meets Art 8(1) conditions 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8 (age 18; secured accommodation/income; no disqualifying conviction; no security/defence obstacle; settled tax). Like the marriage route, it does NOT require release from the prior citizenship and does NOT require the Montenegrin-language test. Within the Art 4 acquisition architecture (origin, birth, admission, treaty), ME-DIA-01 is the admission (prijem) route most generous on residence: two years is the lowest residence floor of any admission path, reflecting a deliberate policy of re-attaching the historic Montenegrin diaspora — sizeable in Serbia, the broader former-Yugoslav space, the United States, Turkey and Western Europe — to the restored state. The route is operative today; its current two-year threshold is the product of a 2010 amendment that RAISED the diaspora residence requirement (Sl. list CG 40/2010), tightening what had previously been an even lighter regime.

Governing provision: Art 10 of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship, with Art 17 (Government criteria delegation) and the Odluka o kriterijumima defining 'legal continuous residence'. The native operative text (reproduced in the consolidated natlex text) reads: 'Crnogorski iseljenik i clan njegove porodice do treceg stepena srodstva u pravoj liniji moze steci crnogorsko drzavljanstvo prijemom ako zakonito i neprekidno boravi u Crnoj Gori najmanje dvije godine i ispunjava uslove iz clana 8 stav 1 tac. 1, 4, 5, 7 i 8 ovog zakona.' (Art 10(1)). Art 10(2): 'Zakoniti i neprekidni boravak lica iz stava 1 ovog clana utvrdjuje se prema kriterijumima propisanim aktom iz clana 17 ovog zakona.' — residence is determined by the same Art 17 bylaw (Odluka o kriterijumima, Sl. list CG 47/08.. 15/22) that governs the ordinary and marriage routes. The incorporated Art 8(1) conditions, in EN, are: (1) age 18; (4) secured accommodation and a permanent income source enabling material and social security; (5) no unconditional prison sentence over one year for an ex-officio offence (or consequences ceased); (7) no obstacles for reasons of security and defence; (8) settled due tax and other legal obligations. By deliberate omission, Art 10 does NOT incorporate Art 8(1)(2) (release from prior citizenship), Art 8(1)(3) (the 10-year residence — replaced by the 2-year emigrant figure), or Art 8(1)(6) (language). Note the contrast with the marriage route: Art 10 DOES incorporate Art 8(1)(8) (tax), whereas Art 11 does not — so the emigrant applicant must additionally show settled tax obligations. The MUP forms rulebook (Pravilnik o obrascima) operationalizes the route with a dedicated Form 2 for emigrants under Art 10, which on its face confirms the two-year (not ten-year) residence threshold for this category. The 'third degree of kinship in the direct line' is the statutory reach of the family extension — direct-line ascendants/descendants to the third degree (e.g. great-grandparent / great-grandchild lineage), measured by the civil-law degree-counting method.