Montenegro is now the Western Balkans' front‑runner for European Union membership, with the European Council having set up a working group in April to draft its accession treaty. The move signals that the bloc believes the country will meet the remaining benchmarks in time for the "28 by 28" target, a plan to admit all remaining Western Balkan states by 2028.

The prospect of Montenegro's entry raises a practical question that could test the EU's multilingual framework: should the Union recognise Montenegrin as its 25th official language?

Why language matters for new members

Every EU member state can propose an official language for EU institutions, and once admitted the new language gains the same legal status as the existing twenty‑four. That status means all EU legislation, policy papers and citizen communications must be translated and interpreted into the language, a process that costs the EU roughly €1 billion a year across all languages. In 2025 alone, translators produced about 2.5 million pages, more than half of which were legislative texts.

Montenegrin is officially the language of Montenegro, but linguists note that it is a standard variety of the former Serbo‑Croatian continuum, alongside Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian. The four varieties are mutually intelligible; a speaker from Podgorica can converse with someone from Zagreb or Sarajevo without difficulty. Yet after the breakup of Yugoslavia each successor state promoted its own standard as a marker of national identity.

In Croatia, language policy has focused on replacing perceived "Serbianisms" with distinctly Croatian vocabulary. In Bosnia‑Herzegovina, the constitution recognises three official languages, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, obliging state bodies to produce three almost identical versions of every legal text. Montenegro's own 2023 census showed more citizens identifying Serbian rather than Montenegrin as their mother tongue, prompting schools to label the subject "Mother Tongue and Literature" to sidestep the controversy.

Cost and bureaucracy versus democratic rights

For the EU, the decision does not hinge on linguistic distance, the bloc already treats Czech and Slovak as separate languages despite their similarity. The key issue is the administrative burden and the principle of linguistic equality. Adding Montenegrin would require a new pool of translators, interpreters and legal experts, even if existing Croatian translations could serve as a starting point.

Critics argue that the extra expense is hard to justify when the languages are so close. They point to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which adopted a pragmatic "BCS" (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) working language and allowed interpreters to move fluidly between the three standards. Even when some witnesses complained they could not understand an interpreter from a different ethnic group, linguists dismissed the claims after reviewing the evidence.

However, the EU's language regime is not a matter of convenience alone. Every official language carries equal legal weight, and citizens have the right to address EU institutions in their own language. Denying Montenegrin official status could be seen as marginalising a national identity that the country has cultivated since independence.

What younger citizens think

A 2026 Democracy Pulse Survey by the Open Society Foundations found that Generation Z in the Western Balkans still feels a strong attachment to national communities, but they are more supportive of regional cooperation than older cohorts. The same study suggested that younger people are less likely to view language as a barrier to integration, preferring practical solutions that facilitate cross‑border dialogue.

In 2017, more than two hundred linguists, writers and public figures from Bosnia‑Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia signed the Declaration on the Common Language, arguing that the four standards constitute a single polycentric language. The declaration has not been adopted by any government, but it reflects a growing intellectual current that could influence future policy discussions, especially if EU accession accelerates the need for functional multilingualism.

Possible paths forward

One option for the EU would be to grant Montenegrin a "working language" status, similar to the BCS model, allowing existing Croatian translators to handle most of the workload while still giving Montenegrin speakers a formal channel to engage with EU bodies. Another route would be to treat Montenegrin as a distinct language, creating a dedicated translation team and ensuring that all EU documents are available in a version that reflects Montenegro's specific lexical choices.

Both approaches have trade‑offs. A working‑language model would keep costs low but might be perceived as a symbolic slight by Montenegrin nationalists. Full official status would respect the principle of linguistic equality but would add to the EU's already substantial translation budget.

Union officials have not yet taken a definitive stance, but the issue is expected to surface in the accession negotiations that will intensify over the next two years. Member states with strong linguistic traditions, such as France and Spain, may weigh in, while smaller countries that have recently joined, like Croatia in 2013, could offer practical insights from their own experience of integrating a new language into EU procedures.

For Montenegrin workers and citizens, the outcome matters beyond bureaucratic jargon. Official language status would affect everything from the language used in EU‑funded projects in the country to the ability of local NGOs to file complaints or request information in their native tongue. It also touches on broader questions of cultural recognition and the balance between national identity and European solidarity.

As Montenegro pushes toward the 2028 deadline, the language debate will likely become a litmus test for how the EU reconciles its commitment to linguistic diversity with the practicalities of a multilingual bureaucracy. Whether the bloc opts for a pragmatic compromise or a full‑scale expansion of its language portfolio, the decision will set a precedent for future enlargements, especially if other candidate countries in the Western Balkans seek similar recognition.