Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic has downplayed a seemingly imminent agreement between the government in Podgorica and the Serbian Orthodox Church in an effort to ease tensions in his fractious Balkan coastal state.
Montenegrin Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic pledged on June 29 that despite coalition frictions his government would sign a "fundamental agreement" governing sensitive relations with the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has considerable influence in his country and within the ruling coalition.
A majority of Montenegrins worship under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has an arm based in Cetinje called the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral.
"The most important thing for Montenegro is to unblock the negotiation process and move toward Europe, but due to the circumstances, it has become an important political issue," Djukanovic said in Madrid after a NATO summit concluded on June 30.
"We just need to reduce tensions [and] the media should not overemphasize the importance of this issue," he added.
Some protests broke out in Podgorica after Abazovic's announcement alongside the Serbian patriarch.
In addition to unsettled questions about property and primacy, the Serbian church has sometimes meddled politically in Montenegrin affairs, including by organizing protests before the election that unseated Djukanovic's governing allies in 2020.
Critics say the draft agreement recognizes Serbian Orthodox subjectivity six centuries further back than the church is afforded in Serbia itself, and that it improperly extends extraterritoriality to it.
It also reportedly sets criteria for settling registration disputes over property. The Serbian church controls hundreds of properties throughout Montenegro.
Abazovic did not specify when the agreement should be signed.
Djukanovic has made Montenegrin identity a prominent theme over a checkered tenure atop domestic politics dating back to the breakup of Yugoslavia three decades ago, and has sought to curb the Serbian church's influence while promoting a Montenegrin alternative group.
Montenegro existed in federation with Serbia until a referendum opted for independence in 2006, and the two countries' ethnonationalist, historical, and cultural ties are deep.
Montenegro's largest ruling party, the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), and the Social Democrats (SDP) criticized a draft of the "Basic Agreement on the Regulation of Mutual Relations" published on June 28 as overly generous toward the Serbian church.
Abazovic countered that "those parties had an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction" but neither group's officials objected when they saw the draft agreement before publication.
He suggested they could exercise their rightful powers but that "this government will close this issue."
After their meeting at church headquarters in Belgrade on June 30, Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije said the new agreement would mark a "crowning" of the normalization of relations between Montenegro and his church.
He noted that efforts to hammer out an agreement had begun in 2012.
Since then, in late 2019, Djukanovic and a previous government pushed through a legislative challenge to the Serbian church's operations and property.
The move sparked a walkout by some pro-Serbian parties and protests that eventually cost Djukanovic's allies their governing majority in 2020 elections.