רכישה מחדש (ponovno sticanje)

ME-RST-01 is Montenegro's re-acquisition route (ponovno sticanje crnogorskog državljanstva) under Article 26 of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship. It is a live route (operative_today: true) addressed to a specific population: a person who PREVIOUSLY HELD Montenegrin citizenship, then LOST it, and in the meantime ACQUIRED the citizenship of another state. For that person Article 26 opens a restoration pathway on markedly easier terms than ordinary naturalization — a residence threshold of at least one year, against the ten years demanded by Article 8 for first-time admission. Typical beneficiaries are former Montenegrin nationals who were released from (otpust) or lost citizenship by operation of law (Art 24, e.g. on voluntarily acquiring a foreign citizenship) and who now wish to recover their Montenegrin status, including returning emigrants and persons whose life circumstances brought them back to Montenegro. The route is statutorily a sub-mode of acquisition by admission (prijem): re-acquisition is still an admission decision by the competent authority (the Ministry of the Interior, MUP), but on a tailored Article 26 condition-set rather than the full Article 8 set. Its place in the framework is as the mirror-image of the loss chapter (Arts 19-25): where Arts 20-23 govern voluntary release and Art 24 governs ex-lege loss, Art 26 is the dedicated 're-entry' provision that lets a former citizen who has since naturalized elsewhere come back into the citizenry, subject to a reduced residence requirement and a trimmed subset of the Article 8 integrity conditions. Because Montenegro maintains a strict single-allegiance default (Arts 8(1)(2), 24(1)(1)), the route's central tension is whether the re-acquirer must release the foreign citizenship he acquired.

Article 26 imposes a closed, trimmed condition-set, which must be read against Article 8(1). (1) ENTRY GATE: the applicant must be a person who LOST Montenegrin citizenship and ACQUIRED another state's citizenship — both limbs are necessary; the provision does not reach a former citizen who is currently stateless (that case falls under Arts 14/40 logic, not Art 26). (2) RESIDENCE: at least one year of legal and continuous residence in Montenegro before/at application, measured by the Article 17 bylaw criteria (the Odluka o kriterijumima defines what counts as zakoniti i neprekidni boravak — lawful status plus unbroken physical presence, with permitted short absences per the bylaw). This is the route's signature concession: one year, versus Article 8(1)(3)'s ten. (3) AGE: Article 8(1)(1) — the applicant must have reached 18. (4) RELEASE FROM FOREIGN CITIZENSHIP: Article 8(1)(2) via Art 26(2) — the application is rejected unless the applicant has been released from the citizenship of the other country. This is decisive: re-acquisition is NOT, on its face, a dual-citizenship route; the re-acquirer must in principle renounce the foreign citizenship he holds. The Article 8(2) carve-outs to item 2 remain available by their own terms (statelessness; a country that will not release; or a country that conditions release on military service, on signing a renunciation statement) — but Article 26(2) does NOT incorporate the broader Art 8 set, only items 1, 2 and 7. (5) SECURITY/DEFENCE: Article 8(1)(7) — there must be no obstacle on grounds of the security and defence of Montenegro, assessed under the Art 17 bylaw / Art 6 security-obstacle grounds. Conditions Article 8(1) items 3 (10-year residence), 4 (accommodation/income), 5 (criminal-sentence bar), 6 (language) and 8 (settled taxes) are NOT imported by Art 26 — a deliberately lighter integrity screen than first-time naturalization. Cross-reference: the Art 18(2) bilateral-treaty dual-citizenship exception (route ME-BIL-01) is the only statutory way to escape the item-2 release requirement, and it is currently hollow (no nationality-regulating treaty in force).

The governing provision is Article 26, set in Chapter IV (PONOVNO STICANjE CRNOGORSKOG DRŽAVLjANSTVA). Article 26(1), native operative text: 'Lice koje je izgubilo crnogorsko državljanstvo i steklo državljanstvo druge države može ponovo steći crnogorsko državljanstvo ako podnese zahtjev za ponovno sticanje crnogorskog državljanstva i najmanje godinu dana zakonito i neprekidno boravi u Crnoj Gori' — a person who lost Montenegrin citizenship and acquired another state's citizenship may RE-ACQUIRE Montenegrin citizenship if he files a re-acquisition application and resides legally and continuously in Montenegro for at least one year. Article 26(2): 'Zahtjev iz stava 1 ovog člana odbiće se ako nijesu ispunjeni uslovi iz člana 8 stav 1 tač. 1, 2 i 7 ovog zakona' — the application is REJECTED if the Article 8(1) conditions items 1 (age 18), 2 (release from the foreign citizenship) and 7 (no security/defence obstacle) are not met. Article 26(3): 'Zakoniti i neprekidni boravak.. utvrđuje se prema kriterijumima propisanim aktom iz člana 17 ovog zakona' — legal continuous residence is determined per the criteria of the Article 17 bylaw. Article 17 delegates to the Government the criteria for Art 8(1) items 3, 4 and 7, for Art 12, and for Art 24(1) items 5-8; that delegation is operationalized by the Government 'Odluka o kriterijumima za utvrđivanje uslova za sticanje crnogorskog državljanstva prijemom' (Sl. list CG 47/08, 80/08, 30/10, 56/12, 15/22), which defines 'legal residence' and the Art 6 security-obstacle grounds. Amendment lineage: the Law's cascade is 13/2008 · 40/2010 · 28/2011 · 46/2011 · 20/2014 (Constitutional Court annulment) · 54/2016 · 73/2019 · 77/2024; the one-year re-acquisition residence in Art 26 is unchanged across this cascade (77/2024 amended only Art 37 register-data use). Re-acquisition is thus a stable, primary-pinned provision.