A foreign practice engaged on a Montenegrin project reads the Construction Act, finds a section headed "Activities of foreign persons", finds automatic recognition of architects' qualifications, and concludes that the route is open. The route is written. It is also, by the Act's own commencement provision, dormant until Montenegro joins the European Union.
Article numbers below are from the consolidated Zakon o izgradnji objekata, published in "Službeni list CG" br. 19/2025, 92/2025 and 160/2025, read on 5 September 2026.
That chain matters for a reason internal to our own writing. Our earlier pages on the permit process and the use permit were checked against a consolidation that stopped at 92/25, and said so on their face. The text read here includes 160/2025 of 30 December 2025. The consolidation does not annotate which provisions each amending act introduced, so we are not attributing any specific change to 160/2025 — we are simply reading the Act as it now stands, including the lettered articles that a 92/25 consolidation does not contain.
What was repealed, and what survives
Article 163 did not repeal the old combined statute outright. On the new Act's entry into force, the following provisions of the Zakon o planiranju prostora i izgradnji objekata ("Službeni list CG" br. 64/17, 44/18, 63/18, 82/20, 86/22 and 4/23) ceased to apply:
- Articles 67 to 152, except Articles 116 and 117, which continue to apply until the expiry of the period for which the Programmes of Temporary Structures were adopted;
- Articles 172 to 202a and Articles 204 to 207;
- Articles 1 to 7 and Articles 211 to 243, in the part relating to the construction of structures.
Two consequences follow. The old act was partially repealed — the planning limb survives in what was not listed, and the construction limb moved into the new Act. And a citation to the old statute for a construction question is not automatically wrong; it is wrong for the listed articles, and it needs checking article by article.
Article 164 is unusual in Montenegrin practice: the Act entered into force the day following its publication, rather than on the eighth day. Anyone reconstructing a timeline for a project that straddles the change should use that date rather than the customary one.
The people the Act licenses, and the citizenship default
The Act does not merely regulate buildings; it regulates who may sign for them.
Article 82(1) provides that a reviewer (revizor) or supervising engineer (nadzorni inženjer) may be a licensed architect or licensed engineer who is a Montenegrin citizen with at least seven years' experience in preparing technical documentation or constructing structures.
Article 89(1) applies the same shape to the project leader (vođa projekta): a licensed architect or licensed engineer of the appropriate profession, a Montenegrin citizen, with at least seven years' professional experience in preparing technical documentation and/or constructing structures. Article 89(2) creates one exception, and it is not a nationality exception: a licensed engineer of the civil-engineering profession, management stream, who is a Montenegrin citizen, with at least five years' experience in construction and project management.
Both articles then contain an opening for non-citizens — a person who is a national of a contracting state (an EU member state, the European Economic Area or the Swiss Confederation) with a qualification recognised under the law governing recognition of professional qualifications for regulated professions.
That opening is where the commencement provision bites.
Article 162: what is switched off
Article 162 provides that the following apply from the date of Montenegro's accession to the European Union:
| Provision | What it would do |
|---|---|
| Article 82(2) | The contracting-state opening for reviewers and supervising engineers |
| Article 89(4) | The corresponding opening for project leaders |
| Articles 93 to 102 | The entire section 6, "Activities of foreign persons" |
| Article 102a(1) and (2) | Automatic recognition of architects' qualifications, and the general recognition system |
| Articles 102b and 102c | The architects' training requirements underpinning that recognition |
Article 93, the first provision of that section, is the general rule: a foreign legal or natural person without an approval to perform the activity issued by the competent authority of its home state may perform the activity if it meets the conditions laid down by this Act for domestic persons — and a foreign natural person must additionally satisfy the law governing the employment and work of foreigners. Article 94 then addresses legal persons from a contracting state.
Because Articles 93 to 102 are deferred as a block, the section that would set out how a foreign practice operates here is not yet operative. That does not mean foreign involvement is prohibited; it means the answer has to be built from the general provisions of the Act, the licensing rules and the foreigners' employment legislation, rather than read off the section that appears to address it. We are not going to state a complete substitute regime that the Act does not currently supply.
What the dormant section would have provided
It is worth knowing what is being held back, because it is the regime a foreign practice will eventually work to — and because the shape of it explains why the deferral matters commercially rather than only formally.
Article 94 would give a legal person seated in a contracting state, or in a state with which an international agreement has been concluded (a "signatory state"), the right to perform construction activity in Montenegro if it satisfies the conditions for performing that activity in its home state. The only step would be procedural: before starting the first job, filing a notification of performance of the activity, together with the proof required by Article 101, with the Chamber of Engineers of Montenegro or the Chamber of Architects and Planners of Montenegro. Home-state qualification, plus a notification.
Article 95 would set a materially heavier route for a legal person from a third state — one that is neither a contracting state nor a signatory state. Such a person, holding an approval, licence or other authorisation from its home-state authority, or entered in the corresponding home-state register, would have the right to perform the activity in Montenegro on condition of reciprocity, if it satisfies the conditions laid down by the Act and is entered in the register under Article 100. Before the first job it would have to file an application for approval, with the home-state evidence and the Article 101 proof, to the relevant Chamber — which would then issue a decision authorising the activity, with a right of appeal against that decision.
The distinction is the one that decides cost and lead time. A contracting-state practice would notify; a third-state practice would apply, be assessed against Montenegrin conditions, satisfy a reciprocity test, and be registered. Neither route is available today.
Two things in Article 162 that do not line up
We read Article 162 against the provisions it names, and two points do not reconcile on the face of the consolidated text. We are flagging them rather than explaining them away.
First, Article 89(4). Article 162 defers "Article 89 paragraph 4". In the consolidated text we read, Article 89 has three paragraphs: the citizenship-plus-seven-years rule, the management-stream exception, and the contracting-state opening. There is no fourth paragraph. Either an amending act renumbered the article without the cross-reference following, or the cross-reference anticipates a paragraph that is not in this consolidation. Anyone relying on the contracting-state opening for a project leader should check the point directly rather than on our reading.
Second, Article 102a(3). Article 162 defers Article 102a paragraphs (1) and (2) — automatic recognition, and the fallback general system. It does not defer paragraph (3), which provides that paragraph (1) also applies to foreign natural persons of the architectural profession covered by the agreement on recognition of professional qualifications for doctors of medicine, doctors of dentistry and architects concluded in the context of the Central European Free Trade Agreement.
So a paragraph that is in force operates by extending a paragraph that is not. For a regional architect relying on the CEFTA instrument, that is not an academic problem — it is the whole question. Article 102a(4) gives the recognition work to the Chamber of Architects and Planners of Montenegro, and Article 102a(5) leaves the detailed conditions and minimum training requirements to the Ministry, so there is an institution and a rulebook to ask.
For completeness, Article 102b sets the training benchmark that automatic recognition would run against: at least five years' full-time university study concluded by a university-type examination, or at least four years' such study plus a certificate of a two-year professional traineeship, with architecture as the main element, balanced between theory and practice, and delivering eleven listed knowledge and competence areas. Article 102b also allows the study years to be expressed in equivalent ECTS credits, and requires the traineeship to be completed after the first three years of study.
One operational limit worth knowing before you appoint
Article 82 also contains a supervision cap that developers and buyers should read. The leading supervising engineer who manages professional supervision over the construction of a structure, and the responsible supervising engineer who manages supervision over particular categories of work, may perform supervision on no more than five construction sites at the same time.
Article 82 also separates the two roles that are often conflated: the leading reviewer or supervising engineer is responsible for checking the mutual consistency of all parts of the technical documentation, or of all the works; the responsible reviewer or supervising engineer is responsible for the part they reviewed, or for particular works being executed in accordance with the reviewed main design, the Act, special regulations and the rules of the profession. The same person may hold both roles.
The transitional provisions still running
Article 160 requires the Chamber of Engineers of Montenegro to align its organisation and work with the Act within six months of entry into force, with the distribution of its assets and obligations carried out under company law. Article 161 gives the Ministry, or another competent authority, 12 months from entry into force to adopt the technical regulations. And the transitional provision immediately preceding Article 160 provides that an inspection procedure begun by an urban-planning and construction inspector under the old act is concluded by a construction inspector under the new one.
Before you appoint a foreign design or supervision team
If you are engaging architects, reviewers, supervising engineers or a project leader on a Montenegrin project — or you are a foreign practice being asked to take one of those roles — send us the intended appointments, the qualifications held and where they were obtained, and we will identify which role each person can lawfully hold under Articles 82 and 89 as they currently apply, what Article 162 means for a contracting-state or CEFTA qualification today, and where the Article 102a(4) recognition route sits. The permit sequence is in the building permit process, the completion side in the use permit, the consequences of building without one in illegal construction and legalizacija, and how we run construction files sits with our construction advisory practice.
