MONTENEGRO NEEDS TO UPGRADE ITS PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY STRATEGY VIS-A-VIS THE EU

A political level public policy advocacy strategy cannot succeed without the engagement of senior politicians, state officials and representatives of business and other important elements of society. The key constraint in Montenegro at this time is the scarcity of human resources needed to improve Montenegro’s public policy advocacy with the EU:

• Diplomatic resources, essentially Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel in the widest sense which can be  mobilised to work with the EU institutions and EU member states are extremely limited. There are a small number of Montenegrin diplomats who are highly appreciated and have considerable credibility in the capitals of the member states and in Brussels. The importance of public policy advocacy should become an important part of the training of young diplomats in Montenegro . More generally, it would be of long term advantage if Montenegrin centres of higher education offered more courses, probably at the postgraduate level, on the law, economics and politics of EU integration, in order to develop a ‘pipeline’ of new recruits for the administration.
• It is also vital that the key diplomatic missions of Montenegro to the European Union (Belgium) and to the member states (Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Malta, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and the UK) are staffed with high quality officials who are versed in EU-policy.
• Line ministries, in which the technical expertise for detailed integration with the EU lies, should be deployed in a program to influence member states.
• The coordination of policy towards the EU is an essential element of any successful strategy to influence the member states or the EU institutions themselves. To be really successful it is probably advisable to have stronger rather than weaker coordination.

The following recommendations should be implemented:

• Organize frequent contact with senior EU politicians.
• Give Ministers and Assistant Ministers prominent roles in the public policy advocacy strategy
• Prime Minister should use influence on line ministries to support EU integration.
• Introduce more courses in universities and training centers as well as send more students for study abroad.
• Train trainers and establish training programme for officials in  all ministries, establish programme to train selected young officials abroad.
• Additional training by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/diplomatic academy.
• Information campaign by government demonstrating the positive externalities.
• Involve business leaders prominently in programme and explain benefits to business.

The Montenegrin President and Government can use several different forms of communication with the European Union and its member states. These include:

• Official planned meetings.
• Meetings held with leaders of the important member states and the EU institutions.
• Addresses to the European Parliament and national parliaments.
• Keynote speeches held in distinguished settings such as Davos, the College of Europe in Bruges  Humboldt University in Berlin.
• Writing key policy statements for important press outlets; the Financial Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine, le Monde etc. 

These traditional elements of a public policy advocacy strategy remain just as important as they always were. However they are still not exploited adequately and the different elements do not seem to be joined up into a strategy sufficiently.

It is important to impress on all the Montenegrin officials and politicians travelling officially to the EU member states and the EU institutions that these trips always have a public policy advocacy element. Every Montenegrin official should be able to explain key elements of policy to the people he or she meets. This, however, requires a better information policy at the level of government to ensure that all officials have access to policy analyses which will allow them to have more meaningful discussions when they are abroad.

A final strand of the public policy advocacy strategy should focus on developing closer links between Montenegrin and EU citizens, through the promotion of tourism in Montenegro.