Serbia and Montenegro

I

Introduction

Serbia and Montenegro, former union of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, located in southeastern Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. Belgrade, located in Serbia, served as the federal capital of unified Serbia and Montenegro.

From 1945 to 1991 Serbia and Montenegro were part of Yugoslavia, a Communist federal state consisting of six republics. Yugoslavia was officially known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) beginning in 1963. In 1990 the Communist Party collapsed, and new non-Communist parties formed. Multiparty elections that year ended 45 years of one-party rule but also brought nationalist political parties into power in all six republics, contributing to ethnic tension in the SFRY. Four of the republics—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia—declared their independence in 1991 and 1992, leaving only Serbia and Montenegro unified. The breakup of the SFRY led to a series of armed conflicts known as the wars of Yugoslav succession.

In April 1992 Serbia and Montenegro acknowledged the breakaway of the four republics by proclaiming themselves the successor state to the SFRY, taking the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). In early 1996 the FRY was recognized as a country by the member nations of the European Union (EU). Many other countries, including the United States, did not recognize the FRY until 2000. Although the United Nations (UN) did not recognize the FRY as the successor state to the SFRY, in 2000 the UN admitted the FRY as a new member.

The FRY’s total land area was 88,361 sq km (34,116 sq mi), less than half the size of the former Yugoslavia. Serbia accounted for 86 percent of the total land area.

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At the 1991 census the population of Serbia and Montenegro, then republics of the larger Yugoslavia, was 10,394,026. As a result of the wars of Yugoslav succession in the 1990s, about 646,000 refugees fled to Serbia and Montenegro from Croatia and Bosnia. Serbia’s population was about 15 times greater than that of Montenegro. Serbs comprised the largest ethnic group. Other groups included ethnic Albanians, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), and people of mixed ethnicity.

During the late 1990s, tensions escalated between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the Serbian province of Kosovo, and FRY president Slobodan Milošević used police and military forces to suppress ethnic Albanian separatism in the province. In March 1999 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted an air war against the FRY after Milošević refused to accept an international peace plan for Kosovo. After a peace agreement was reached in June, Kosovo came under UN administration.

In February 2003 the leaders of Serbia and Montenegro endorsed a new constitutional charter that gave more autonomy to the constituent republics and changed the country’s name from the FRY to Serbia and Montenegro. The charter permitted each republic to hold a referendum on full independence after three years. In May 2006 Montenegrins voted in favor of independence. The following month Serbia and Montenegro formally became separate states.

II

Government Structure

A

Overview

Serbia and Montenegro established the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) on April 27, 1992, under a new constitution. The constitution provided for a democratic form of government, with a president and a Federal Assembly. Officially, the two constituent republics each had a great deal of autonomy, with their own presidents and assemblies. However, before October 2000 the constitutional structure of the federation’s government bore little relation to the way the country was actually governed. The formal institutions of government served primarily as tools for the personal rule of Slobodan Milošević, the federation president from 1997 to 2000. Prior to becoming FRY president, Milošević was president of Serbia, and that republic’s government had more power in the FRY than the federal government. Opponents of Milošević came to power in Montenegro in 1997, and after that time Montenegro took little part in the institutions and activities of the FRY.

After Milošević’s political downfall in 2000, a democratic government was established in the FRY following federal elections in September 2000 and also in the republic of Serbia after elections there in January 2001. Over the next two years, representatives of the governments of Serbia, Montenegro, and the FRY drafted a constitutional charter for Serbia and Montenegro as the basis for a new union between the two republics. This charter was adopted by the legislatures of each republic in January 2003, and it was adopted and proclaimed by the FRY parliament on February 4, 2003. At that time the FRY ceased to exist and was succeeded by a new state called simply Serbia and Montenegro. The constitutional charter provided for a shared central government with a narrow range of competence and very few powers. Almost all government authority rested with the constituent republics.

The charter permitted the republics to hold separate referendums on full independence after a period of three years. In May 2006 the people of Montenegro voted in favor of independence, and the two republics formally became separate countries the following month. The remainder of this section details the government of Serbia and Montenegro as it stood under the 2003 charter, prior to the split in June 2006.

B

Executive

The president of Serbia and Montenegro was both the chief of state and the head of government. The president chaired the council of ministers, which performed the executive duties of the union. There was no prime minister at the federal level, as this position was eliminated under the 2003 charter. The president was nominated by the speaker and deputy speaker of parliament and then confirmed by parliamentary vote. The president formally represented Serbia and Montenegro at home and abroad, promulgated the laws passed by the parliament, and was a member of the Supreme Defense Council, which oversaw state defense. The president could also call new elections for the parliament. The president could not be from the same republic as the speaker of the parliament, and the presidency was required to alternate between the two constituent republics. Thus, a president could not continue in office for more than a single four-year term.

Members of the council of ministers were chosen by the president and approved by the parliament. The council of ministers included the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of defense, the minister for international economic cooperation, and the minister for human and minority rights.

C

Legislature

The parliament of Serbia and Montenegro had a single chamber with 126 members, 91 from Serbia and 35 from Montenegro. The constitutional charter of 2003 provided that until 2005 the members were to be elected from among the members of the national assemblies of Serbia and of Montenegro, by those assemblies. After this time, members of the parliament were to be popularly elected for terms of four years. The powers of the parliament were quite limited, and virtually all decisions required a high degree of consensus. Most legislative authority remained with each of the member republics. All citizens aged 18 or older could vote.