The Montenegro Government during the 15th cabinet session has announced that the Special citizenship by investment program will not be extended after its expiration of 3 year duration until Dec 31, 2021
The Montenegro CIP will close from Jan 1, 2022 due to pressure from EU and difficulty of Montenegro pursuing path to EU-acquis. Any pending applications will continue to be processed after this date.
The CIP has failed to attract applicants and investments and the scheme did not become popular. The scheme was designed inhouse by government based on Grant + investment model.
According to latest update from the Government, so far only 131 applications for Montenegrin citizenship have been submitted to the Investment Agency, of which 37 passed all checks and were resolved positively, 12 were rejected due to the negative opinion of the International Eligibility Assessment Agent, while the remaining ones are in different stages of processing.
The official announcement states
“Having in mind the reservations of the European Commission on this issue due to the possible difficulties of Montenegro’s path to the EU, as well as the questionable purpose of the Programme and its contribution to economic development, given that only 37 citizenships of the planned limit of 2000 have been granted so far, the Cabinet decided that the Programme should not be extended after the expiration of its three-year duration on 31 December 2021.”
Montenegro opened its special investor citizenship program for business and economic interest in 2018. The Montenegro investment agency administers the special citizenship program.
So far 15 tourism hotel projects has been approved for CIP purpose. The scheme was later expanded to attract investments in fisheries, agriculture and wood processing industries.
This will be the third CIP to be closed after Moldova and Cyprus have closed doors to CBI investors.
