At the 27th Accession Conference, Montenegro provisionally closed chapters 2 (Free Movement of Workers) and 28 (Consumer & Health Protection), marking another milestone on its accession path. Coming on the heels of the EU–Western Balkans Summit in Tivat, which had placed the small Adriatic state in the spotlight, this latest breakthrough brought Montenegro halfway through its negotiation odyssey, widening its lead over other candidate countries and reinforcing its reputation in Brussels as “the most advanced country in the accession process”. Yet, as Podgorica pushes to tick all boxes by 2026 and become the EU’s 28th member state by 2028, the country’s large and dysfunctional public sector has become an elephant in the room that can no longer be ignored.
Ever since the 2020 watershed elections ended the three-decade-long authoritarian rule of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), incumbents have pledged to streamline the country’s administration, which years of clientelism and state capture had turned into a pachydermic ‘voting machinery’. In an unprecedented display of transparency, the Ministry of Public Administration began disclosing public-sector employment figures. A much-welcome step, were it not for what the numbers reveal: an increase of nearly 5,500 employees over the past six years, more than during the entire final decade of DPS rule. Combined with the 5,000 new hires across state-owned enterprises, the total stands just below 80,000. In other words, roughly one in three Montenegrin workers is employed by the state, the largest share in the Western Balkans and one of Europe’s highest. Quantity, however, has not translated into quality, as the Montenegrin administration consistently performs below EU standards.
Alongside employee numbers, the public sector wage bill also skyrocketed, reaching €725 million in 2026 – 25% of total public spending. This triggered reactions from the World Bank, which warned Podgorica that its “unusually large number of public employees” is unsustainable and “reduces space for fiscal, capital spending, and debt reduction”. What is more, unjustified hiring and wage increases have disproportionately coincided with electoral cycles marked by vote-buying allegations, suggesting that the failure of rationalization plans is, first and foremost, a matter of partitocracy.
Following its first transfer of power since the fall of communism, Montenegro entered an era of unprecedented political instability. In just three years, the country saw the collapse of two governments, culminating in the formation of the largest catch-all coalition in its history, spanning the entire political spectrum. In this new political landscape, old informal practices like clientelism and party patronage have been repurposed. They no longer serve to sideline political opponents and entrench the dominance of a single, hegemonic party as they did under the DPS. Instead, they have become powerful kingmakers, holding together fragile and heterogeneous majorities, and mitigating internal tensions that might otherwise pull them apart.
Yet, the outcome remains the same: every election is followed by new waves of public-sector hiring, lucrative public companies are divided among coalition partners, and dozens of positions in hospitals, schools, and other state institutions are distributed along party lines. With Montenegrins heading to the polls in less than a year, Prime Minister Spajić's recent announcement that another 3,000 employees will be recruited in order to “strengthen administrative capacities in line with EU obligations” hardly sounds convincing.
To be clear, some specialized bodies key to accession negotiations are genuinely understaffed. Still, capacity gaps must be accurately assessed in order to be filled, not weaponized as a pretext for further clientelist appointments. This is the message of the 2026 BTI report, which warned that halting the uncontrolled expansion of the public sector before it is too late will “test the government's commitment to good governance and reveal whether its survival strategy extends beyond the distribution of political favors”. It is also something Montenegrins have long been demanding. In a system where political parties remain widely distrusted and state institutions are still seen as corrupt and politicized, ending party-based employment remains the public's foremost concern, with nearly 70% believing the situation has either worsened or remained unchanged since 2020.
This is not to deny that Montenegro has made genuine progress on its democratization path. It did. This is evident not least in its civic and political rights record, where it has climbed 67 places in the World Press Freedom Index, now ranking first in the region and far ahead of several EU member states. It is to emphasize that, as long as partitocracy rules, not only will the public sector remain exposed to unrestrained political plunder, but also Montenegro’s fragile democratic gains will be at risk of reversal. A case in point is the recent security sector reform, which, experts warn, has ‘legalized’ arbitrary appointments and dismissals, weakened democratic oversight, and tightened partisan control over the police and intelligence apparatus.
With unprecedented leverage and great momentum on both sides, the EU can play an important role in helping Montenegro overcome the burdensome legacies of authoritarianism. To do so, however, it must first abandon the self-centered, stabilocracy-driven approach that underpinned its decades-long support for the Đukanović regime. Today, Brussels sees the accession of Montenegro – with its small population size, negligible impact on absorption capacity, and undisputed CFSP alignment – as the ‘easiest bit to swallow’ in order to score a point at a time of high geopolitical stakes. Viewed through a different lens, however, these very ingredients present the EU with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to show that ‘enlargement is on’ but also to reaffirm its transformative power and reclaim its long-lost credibility as a democratic actor.
Should Brussels turn the page, it will quickly find that the instruments needed to curb partitocracy are already there. For example, Montenegro's newly adopted first-ever law on public companies has all it takes to tackle the abuses that have plagued the sector for decades. It just needs to be implemented. As BiEPAG has already emphasized, a well-crafted Accession Treaty, encompassing clear roadmaps and measurable benchmarks, can be a powerful tool to ensure incumbents actually ‘walk the talk’. For the public sector, this could entail coupling progressive right-sizing with targeted investments to stimulate Montenegro's private sector. In this way, the political costs of rationalization would be mitigated, and public dependence on clientelist appointments would also be diminished.
If there is a will, there is a way. If building a merit-based, professional civil service takes center stage, Montenegro's EU accession would not only deliver a strong message to Montenegrins themselves. It would also send powerful shockwaves across the entire Western Balkans, where the struggle for good governance and institutional integrity has emerged as a shared, transnational cause beyond ethno-political cleavages. Last but not least, it would strip skeptical forces within the EU of one of their key arguments: that the process does not work and therefore should not happen.
Alternatively, the costs of admitting an unreformed Montenegro out of geopolitical urgency and realpolitik calculations may not be felt immediately. At the end of the day, its large and politicized public sector accounts for only an infinitesimal fraction of the workforce of several European capitals. In the long term, however, it risks doing more harm than good to the EU’s enlargement policy and its quest for strategic autonomy. After all, if the Union cannot get it right with ‘small’ Montenegro, why should anyone believe it can succeed with ‘large’ Ukraine?