Status date: 22 September 2026. Status: Adopted, not yet in force. Instrument: Zakon o pravosudnoj saradnji u krivičnim stvarima sa državama članicama Evropske unije (Law on judicial cooperation in criminal matters with EU member states), EPA 1183 XXVIII, file number 24-9/26-1, submitted by the Government of Montenegro. Parliament adopted the text on 16 September 2026, the President signed the promulgation decree on 18 September 2026, and as of the morning of 22 September 2026 it has not appeared in Službeni list.
We opened this file because of what the headline invites readers to assume. "Montenegro adopts the European Arrest Warrant" is accurate. "An EU member state's warrant now runs directly in Montenegro" is not. One article separates the two, and it sits at the very end of the text.
What the text says
The closing article splits two dates that are usually the same one: "Ovaj zakon stupa na snagu osmog dana od dana objavljivanja u Službenom listu Crne Gore, a primjenjivaće se od dana pristupanja Crne Gore Evropskoj uniji." The law enters into force eight days after publication. It becomes applicable on the day Montenegro joins the European Union. The text names no calendar date for that day, and neither do we.
The article before it spells out the consequence. On the day application begins, the existing law of the same name, published in Službeni list CG number 85/18, ceases to have effect. Judicial cooperation with EU states is therefore not a blank page in Montenegrin law: a 2018 statute governs it and keeps governing it until accession. The new text replaces that statute rather than amending it.
The law runs to thirteen chapters and 194 articles. Article 1 lists ten cooperation mechanisms: the European Arrest Warrant, the European Investigation Order, freezing and confiscation orders, financial penalty decisions, custodial judgments, probation and alternative sanction decisions, supervision measure decisions, the European Protection Order, joint investigation teams, and transfer of criminal proceedings.
The arrest warrant chapter is the part most readers will feel.
| Subject | Rule | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Issuing threshold | For prosecution, an offence carrying at least one year and a detention order against the person; for enforcement, a final sentence of at least four months or at least four months remaining | čl. 16 |
| Dual criminality | Checked as a rule; not checked for listed offences carrying three years or more in the issuing state | čl. 9 |
| Competent court | The executing court is a viši sud; where none can be identified, the Higher Court in Podgorica | čl. 18 |
| Mandatory refusal | Amnesty, a final judgment on the same act, and being under fourteen at the time of the offence | čl. 20 |
| Nationals and residents | Surrender may be made conditional on the person being returned to Montenegro to serve the sentence | čl. 22 |
| Time limits | Sixty days to decide on surrender where there is no consent, a further thirty with reasons, then Eurojust is informed | čl. 35 |
| Appeal | Three days to appeal a surrender decision to the Court of Appeal, and the appeal suspends execution | čl. 36 |
Article 22 repays a close reading. It places "crnogorski državljanin" and "lice koje ima stalni boravak prema domaćem zakonu" in the same sentence. The possibility of serving the sentence in Montenegro is not limited to citizens; a foreign national holding permanent residence under domestic law sits inside the same clause. Article 25 requires that a person deprived of liberty receive, before the first hearing and in a language they understand, a written notice of rights, and that notice includes the right to appoint a second lawyer in the issuing state.
What the text does not say
It does not define accession day. There is no reference to a negotiating timetable, a chapter closure or a target year. The article says only "danom pristupanja". A sentence such as "it will start to apply in 2028" cannot be drawn from this document.
Nor can you read from it what governs today. We tried to read the consolidated wording of law 85/18; on the morning of 22 September 2026 sluzbenilist.me returned a server error across the whole site, including its root, and two separate connections gave the same result. We therefore did not attempt a clause-by-clause comparison between the old law and the new one. What we did establish is which gazette number the new text repeals.
Only one thing separates the adopted text from the bill. On 3 September 2026 the Government tabled an amendment inserting "Počevši od dana iz stava 5 ovog člana," at the start of article 19, paragraph 6, tying that paragraph to the transition timetable for the decentralised IT system under Regulation (EU) 2023/2844. The Legislative Committee found the amendment legally acceptable on 16 September. We compared the copy attached to the promulgation decree against the bill article by article: chapters, article count and numbering are identical, and the difference is confined to that paragraph.
How we read it
For an EU national living in Montenegro, the practical position today is this. If a warrant issued in your home state reaches Montenegro, this law is not the instrument that answers it. The file proceeds under law 85/18 and the extradition conventions Montenegro has ratified. Adoption has not changed the legal basis of any document that reaches you this week.
What accession day will change is speed. A sixty-day decision period, a seventy-two hour window to challenge a detention order and three days to appeal a surrender decision are far tighter than the extradition procedure now in use. For readers holding permanent residence, the return guarantee in article 22 is worth knowing in advance, because it is drafted as a condition to be sought from the court rather than one that applies by itself.
There is also a database dimension. Article 19 treats an alert entered in the Schengen Information System as having the same effect as an arrest warrant. Once Montenegro is inside that system, an arrest need not wait for a separate warrant document to arrive.
What did not change
No European Arrest Warrant can be issued or executed in Montenegro on the basis of this law today, because the application date has not arrived. Residence and work permit rules, company registration duties, tax rates and the legalizacija timetable are untouched by this text. Custody rights in criminal procedure sit in a separate statute and are not altered here. Montenegro's extradition relationship with non-EU states also falls outside this law, which is written for member states only.
How to verify
The parliamentary file is at zakoni.skupstina.me akt 4356. The Status field reads "Usvojen" and the document list holds both the voting record of 16 September, showing 49 votes to nil in principle and 51 to nil as a whole, and the promulgation decree of 18 September. The full adopted text sits inside that second document; go to the end of it for the article on entry into force. The Government's amendment is a separate item in the same list.
One warning. The gov.me copy that ranks first in search results for this law's title is not the adopted text but an earlier draft. That copy has 186 articles, its article 19 sets out refusal grounds, and its final article ties entry into force directly to accession day. The adopted text has 194 articles, its article 19 governs communication between authorities, and it separates entry into force from application. A cheap test tells you which copy you are holding: does the article the amendment targets deal, in your copy, with the subject the amendment describes?
We set out the written notice of rights in custody in our arrest rights article, and the Criminal Code amendment promulgated by the same decree in our adoption note. The same "in force but not yet applicable" pattern appears in our ATAD rulebooks article. We will record the entry into force date on this page once the gazette number appears; the rest of the file can be followed from our Legal Updates page.
