If your company employs people in Montenegro, whether in an office in Podgorica, a hotel on the coast or a building site with subcontractors, the statute that governs workplace safety changed in April 2026. The Zakon o zaštiti i zdravlju na radu (Law on Occupational Safety and Health), published in Službeni list Crne Gore no. 51/2026 on 15 April 2026, repealed the 2014 Act (Sl. list CG 34/14 and 44/18) in full (Article 77). It entered into force on the eighth day after publication (Article 78), which on our count is 23 April 2026.
The employer obligations in the new Act are not optional and they are not delegable. Article 75 gives employers one year from entry into force to bring their operations into line, so the compliance date is 23 April 2027. Article 46(6) states the rule that matters most for a foreign-owned company: the employer remains responsible for workplace safety regardless of how it organises or outsources the work. Hiring a consultancy does not move the liability.
This guide is written for the company, not the worker. It maps what the 2026 Act requires of an employer and, where you build, of an investor; which documents an inspector will ask for; and what each breach costs under Articles 68 to 72. Every article of the Act cited below was read in the gazette text on 16 October 2026.
Who the Act binds, and why "we only have a branch" does not help
Article 9(1) defines the employer broadly: a legal entity, a part of a foreign company (dio stranog privrednog društva), an entrepreneur, a public body, and a natural person acting as an investor, who engages a person under an employment contract or on any other legal basis. Article 9(9) defines the employee just as broadly: anyone who works for the employer on any legal basis, including trainees.
Three consequences follow for foreign groups:
- A branch is an employer. A Montenegrin branch of a foreign company falls within Article 9(1) and within the fine provisions of Article 68, which name "part of a foreign company" alongside legal entities.
- Agency workers are covered. Article 4(2) extends the Act to workers employed through an agency for temporary assignment of workers. Article 28(6) requires the company where they actually work to instruct them on the risks and safety measures of that workplace.
- Contractors' staff are your concern too. Article 31(2) requires you to inform the employer whose staff you engage of the risks, first-aid, fire and evacuation arrangements at your site.
Article 7 adds a rule that recruiters of foreign labour should read twice: safety measures may not create any cost for the employee. Charging workers for protective equipment, medical checks or training, whether directly or through wage deductions, is the first offence listed in Article 68(1).
The core documents an inspector will ask for
The Act turns workplace safety into a paper trail. The table below lists what an employer must hold, with the article that requires it.
| Document or measure | What the Act requires | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Risk assessment act (akt o procjeni rizika) | Adopted and held for every job position; identifies hazards, exposed positions, likelihood, acceptability and measures; made available to employees | 25(1)-(4), 25(6) |
| Update of the risk assessment | After any new hazard, adaptation, reconstruction, breakdown, serious, collective or fatal injury, or when health monitoring shows it is needed | 25(5) |
| General act or employment contract clauses | Rights, duties and responsibilities on safety, including the PPE schedule (normativ) for each worker | 24(1)-(3) |
| Safety professional | Designated employee (stručno lice) or internal safety service, or a licensed external organisation if you lack qualified staff | 46(1)-(3) |
| Training programme | Adopted by the employer; training before assignment, on transfer, new technology, new equipment, process change, and return after more than a year away | 28(1)-(2) |
| Equipment inspection reports | Work equipment may be handed to workers only with a report from an authorised entity, within prescribed intervals | 18(2) |
| Medical examinations | For positions with special conditions or increased risk, and on return after more than a year's absence | 27(2) |
| Written information to staff | Risks, prevention, first aid, fire protection, evacuation and the persons in charge | 31(1) |
| First aid, fire and evacuation designations | Designated employees, scaled to the size and hazards of the workplace | 36(1) |
| Compulsory insurance | All employees insured against injury at work, occupational disease and work-related illness, premiums paid by the employer | 38 |
| Records | Eleven categories, from high-risk positions and injuries to training and equipment tests | 62(1) |
| Annual safety report | At least once a year, considered by the management bodies together with the business report | 63(1) |
Two of these deserve a closer look because they are the ones foreign-owned companies most often lack.
The risk assessment act. Article 25 is the spine of the Act. It is not a generic policy; it is a document per job position that also designates the positions with increased risk and the health requirements for them, based on the professional assessment of an authorised occupational health institution (Article 25(3)). Article 52(1) lists drafting it among the tasks an authorised organisation or internal safety service performs. Failing to adopt and hold one, or failing to implement its measures, is a separate offence under Article 68(1)(14).
The safety professional. Article 46(2) sets the qualification: a university degree in a technical or other appropriate field, one year of professional experience and a passed professional exam for safety work in the relevant activity, designated in writing. If you do not have enough such people, Article 46(3) requires you to engage a legal entity or entrepreneur licensed by the Ministry. Licences run for three years (Article 49(8)) and are entered in a register the Ministry keeps (Article 51). Article 46(5) bars an in-house safety professional or service from doing this work for other employers, so a group cannot simply lend its Montenegrin safety officer to a sister company.
Accidents: the 24-hour rule
Article 63(3) is the provision that is tested on the worst day a company has. The employer must report immediately, and at the latest within 24 hours, in writing, to the occupational safety inspection:
- every fatal, collective or serious injury at work;
- any other injury at work that causes the employee's absence for more than three working days; and
- any dangerous occurrence that could endanger employees' safety and health.
Article 63(4) then requires the employer to issue an injury report to the injured worker and to the health institution that examined them. The inspector may carry out an on-site investigation of serious, collective and fatal injuries (Article 67). After such an injury the risk assessment must be revised (Article 25(5)). Missing the 24-hour report and failing to issue the injury report are separate offences, Article 68(1)(40) and (41).
For a foreign parent company, the practical point is that the report goes to the Montenegrin inspection and must be in writing within a day. If your incident procedure routes everything through a group safety function in another time zone, check that someone in Montenegro has the authority to file.
Workers' rights the employer must respect
The Act gives employees enforceable safety rights, and several of them carry fines for the employer:
- Right to refuse work (Article 41) if the worker was not informed of the risks, was not given the required medical examination, or faces immediate danger because prescribed measures are missing. If you consider the refusal unjustified, you must notify the inspection immediately (Article 41(3)).
- No work under serious and immediate danger (Article 37(3)) unless lives are being saved; demanding it is an offence under Article 68(1)(34).
- Employee safety representative (Article 34): employees may elect one or more representatives; at least one must receive at least five paid hours a month for the role (Article 34(3)), and the representative must receive training during working hours (Article 33).
- Escalation to the inspection (Article 43(2)): if the employer does not remove a reported hazard within three days, the employee may request inspection intervention.
The employee also has duties, including not working under the influence of alcohol or drugs and submitting to testing under the employer's act (Article 44). Article 73 fines employees between €30 and €1,000 for breaching them. But Article 43(3) closes the obvious argument: the employee's obligations do not affect the principle of the employer's responsibility.
The only exemption is narrow. Article 39 releases the employer from responsibility for unusual and unforeseeable circumstances resulting from force majeure or beyond its control, or for events whose consequences could not be avoided despite the measures taken. A missing risk assessment or an untrained worker will not fit that description.
Building in Montenegro: the investor's separate duties
If your company commissions construction, the Act treats you as an investor with obligations of your own (Articles 10 to 17, 22 and 58), separate from those of the contractors who employ the site workers. The main site obligations, and who carries each:
| Obligation | Who | Trigger | Article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent review of the technical documentation for safety compliance, by an authorised entity | Investor | Design of buildings for work premises | 10(2) |
| Appoint one or more safety coordinators, separately for the design phase and the works phase | Investor | Two or more contractors, or one contractor who engages others | 11(1)-(3) |
| Works-phase coordinator must not be employed by a contractor on that site | Investor | Always | 13(3) |
| Safety and health plan for the site | Investor and the employer carrying out the works | Construction, reconstruction, adaptation, remediation or demolition | 16(3) |
| Notice of start of works to the inspection, at least five days before | Employer carrying out the works | Works over 30 working days with more than 20 workers at once, or more than 500 workers, or over 500 days | 16(4) |
| Copy of the notice kept on site; updated notice filed within five days of any change | Investor | Any change | 16(5)-(6) |
| Written contract between employers on a shared site, filed with the inspection five days before works | Every employer working on the site | Two or more employers working at the same time | 30(2)-(3) |
Article 15 contains the sentence that most surprises developers: appointing coordinators does not release the investor from responsibility, and the investor cannot transfer its obligations under the Act to the employer (that is, to the contractor). Transferring them is itself an offence (Article 69(1)(4)). Under Article 9(1) a natural person can be an investor, and Article 69 has a fine band for natural-person investors as well.
The works-phase coordinator can order a temporary stop on part or all of the site in case of immediate danger (Article 61(2)), and must inform the site manager, the supervising engineer and the investor.
What breaches cost: the fine bands in Articles 68 to 72
The Act lists offences by number, so each missing document or measure is a separate misdemeanour. The bands are:
| Who | Fine | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Employer (legal entity or part of a foreign company), 41 listed offences | €500 – €15,000 | 68(1) |
| Responsible person in that legal entity | €30 – €1,000 | 68(2) |
| Entrepreneur | €250 – €10,000 | 68(3) |
| Investor (legal entity or part of a foreign company), 11 listed offences | €500 – €15,000 | 69(1) |
| Investor as entrepreneur / as natural person | €300 – €12,000 / €300 – €4,000 | 69(2)-(3) |
| Responsible person in an investor legal entity | €30 – €4,000 | 69(4) |
| Safety coordinator (design phase or works phase) | €200 – €2,000 | 70, 71 |
| Legal entity that does not keep the Article 62 records | €200 – €2,000 | 72(1) |
| Employee | €30 – €1,000 | 73 |
Two notes on reading the table. First, the upper limit of Article 72(1) is printed as "2.00.0 eura" in the gazette text we read; we read it as €2,000. Second, the band is per offence. A site inspection that finds no risk assessment, no training programme and no equipment test reports is three offences under Article 68(1)(14), (23) and (6), not one.
Misdemeanour fines are not the only exposure. Montenegro's Criminal Code contains an offence for failing to take workplace safety measures (Article 232, checked on 10 October 2026 against the consolidated text up to Sl. list CG 121/2025), and the injured worker's damages claim runs under the Law on Obligations. We do not state criminal penalty ranges here: the Criminal Code was amended again in 2026 and we have not re-read that article against the latest amendment.
Transitional rules: what still applies until the new rulebooks arrive
The Act leaves the detail to secondary legislation. The Ministry of labour is to adopt the content of the risk assessment act (Article 25(7)), of the site safety plan (Article 17(4)), the form of the start-of-works notice (Article 16(7)), inspection intervals for equipment (Article 18(3)), the records forms (Article 62(2)) and more. Article 74 gives three years for these acts and provides that, until then, the rulebooks in force before the new Act continue to apply where they do not conflict with it.
In practice this means a company should not wait for new rulebooks before acting. The obligations themselves, and the fines for breaching them, are in the Act and apply now; the one-year window of Article 75 is the period to align. One provision is expressly postponed: the right to a medical examination on the employee's request at least once every three years (Article 27(3)) applies only from Montenegro's accession to the European Union (Article 76).
A practical sequence for the next six months
For a company that employs people in Montenegro and has not reviewed its safety documentation since the 2014 Act, a workable order is:
- Map who works for you on what basis, including agency workers, posted staff and contractors' crews on your premises (Articles 4, 9, 28(6), 31(2)).
- Decide how safety work is organised: an in-house safety professional meeting Article 46(2), an internal service, or a licensed external organisation under a written contract (Articles 46(3), 56). Check that the organisation is in the Ministry's register (Article 51).
- Adopt or re-adopt the risk assessment act for every position, with the high-risk positions and health requirements identified (Article 25).
- Align the general act or employment contracts, including the PPE schedule (Article 24), and the training programme (Article 28(2)).
- Confirm the compulsory insurance under Article 38 covers every employee.
- Write the 24-hour reporting procedure with a named person in Montenegro (Article 63(3)-(4)).
- Set up the eleven record categories of Article 62 and the annual report of Article 63(1).
- If you build: appoint coordinators, commission the site plan, and require your contractors to file the five-day notice and the shared-site contract (Articles 11, 16, 30).
How we help employers
RoNa Legal advises companies that employ people in Montenegro on their legal obligations as employers, and coordinates with licensed safety organisations and licensed employment agencies where a task requires a licence we do not hold. We review your risk assessment, contracts and site arrangements against the 2026 Act, draft the contractual allocation between investor, contractor and subcontractors, and advise when an inspection or an injury has already happened. We do not prepare the technical risk assessment ourselves; that is work for an authorised organisation under Article 52.
If your company employs staff or builds in Montenegro, send us your current safety documents and site contracts before the April 2027 deadline and we will tell you what the 2026 Act requires you to change.
Related reading for employers: recruitment agencies and the employer's legal framework, Montenegro employer labour law and payroll guide, criminal offences of employers, planning a construction-site workforce as a foreign developer, and our construction advisory service.
