As Montenegro hosts the EU-Western Balkans Summit, much of the discussion is understandably focused on reforms, accession milestones and progress towards membership. These conversations are important. However, citizens do not experience progress reports. They experience whether rivers are clean, whether waste is collected separately, whether pollution is reduced, whether institutions function and whether public investments deliver tangible improvements to their quality of life.
Montenegro has made progress in aligning legislation with European standards. Yet the greatest challenge today is no longer legislation. It is implementation. This is where the conversation should evolve.
Waste management offers a good example. Today, most municipal waste in Montenegro still ends up in landfills. Separate collection remains limited, waste prevention measures are underdeveloped, and local governments often lack the financial and technical capacity needed to deliver the transition expected from them. But perhaps the most important question is not whether Montenegro faces challenges. Every country faces challenges. The more important question is whether we are creating the right incentives and investments to overcome them.
Across Europe, there is growing recognition that climate and circular economy objectives cannot be achieved through recycling alone. The focus is increasingly shifting towards prevention, reuse, repair, composting and high-quality separate collection. The European Commission is discussing stronger landfill restrictions, stricter pre-treatment requirements, minimum landfill gate fees and wider implementation of Pay-As-You-Throw systems. These measures reflect a simple principle: if we want different outcomes, we must change the economic incentives that shape behaviour.
For too long, disposal has been the cheapest and easiest option across much of Europe. Increasingly, policymakers recognise that circular economy objectives cannot be achieved through targets alone. Economic signals must support prevention, reuse, repair, recycling and composting. This lesson is relevant not only for Montenegro, but for the enlargement process itself.
The success of European integration should not be measured solely by the number of laws transposed into national legislation. It should be measured by cleaner communities, lower emissions, more resilient local economies and a better quality of life for citizens.
At the same time, Europe is increasingly recognising methane reduction as a climate priority. This is highly relevant for Montenegro. Organic waste represents a significant share of our municipal waste stream, yet the country still lacks adequate composting infrastructure. As a result, valuable resources are lost while avoidable methane emissions continue to be generated in landfills.
If climate action is truly a priority, should we not first invest in preventing these emissions from occurring?
This brings us to a broader discussion about strategic choices. Montenegro is currently discussing investments in waste incineration. This debate should not be framed as being simply for or against a particular technology. The more important question is what kind of future we are trying to build. Are we investing in systems designed to reduce waste generation over time, or in systems that require a continuous flow of waste for decades to remain economically viable? Are we prioritising the prevention of emissions, particularly methane emissions, or are we focusing on managing waste after it has already been created?
These are not only technical questions. They are questions about vision. Because every major investment shapes the direction of the transition.
Montenegro’s European path remains the strongest framework available for achieving higher environmental standards and improving quality of life for citizens. The goals are clear and largely shared. The challenge now is ensuring that implementation, investments and incentives are aligned with them. Ultimately, European integration is a partnership. Montenegro has responsibilities, certainly. We need to strengthen implementation, invest strategically and accelerate progress.
But Europe also has a responsibility to ensure that candidate countries are equipped to deliver the transition that it envisions. The debate should therefore move beyond asking whether Montenegro is progressing fast enough. Instead, we should ask a few more strategic questions:
If methane reduction is a climate priority, are we investing enough in organics management?
If waste prevention sits at the top of the waste hierarchy, are we investing enough in prevention?
If circular economy is our shared vision, are we creating incentives that make circular solutions the easiest and most affordable choice?
And ultimately: are we making the strategic choices necessary to achieve the transition are building?