Official report: 941 public gatherings in Montenegro during 2025, most of them politically motivated

During 2025, 941 public gatherings were held in Montenegro, most of them of a political character, according to the Report on the implementation of the Law on Public Gatherings and Public Events for 2025, as Vijesti reports.

Of the total of 941 recorded gatherings, 412 were of a political character, 71 were protests over socio-economic issues, 83 were religious gatherings and 375 were classified as other public gatherings. The number is many times greater than a year earlier: in 2024, only 347 gatherings were held, the report specifies.

According to data from the Police Directorate, around 233,000 citizens took part in all the gatherings, while the police secured 937 public gatherings. The largest increase is linked to the months-long protests in Cetinje and Šavnik: in Cetinje, from 6 February to 6 December, 298 gatherings were held, mainly road blockades lasting one to three hours, following the mass killing of 1 January 2025, when Aco Martinović killed 12 people — citizens demanded accountability from the institutions. In Šavnik, from 27 February to 14 June, 104 gatherings were held because of dissatisfaction with the electoral process, after the 2022 local elections were not completed in two polling stations.

Cetinje and Šavnik together account for 402 gatherings, about 43 percent of all public gatherings in 2025. Of the 941 gatherings, 537 were notified, 399 were unnotified and 5 were spontaneous; as Vijesti writes, the police did not ban any notified gathering last year, whereas in 2024 three gatherings had been banned. Only one disturbance of public order was recorded — on 7 June in Šavnik, with a verbal and physical clash between protesters, for which misdemeanour proceedings were requested against three people.

The report, on which MPs will vote at the session scheduled for 8 October, stresses the need for more precise legal regulation of spontaneous gatherings and for a definition of the organiser. The Government of Montenegro, after reviewing the report, tasked the Ministry of Internal Affairs with initiating amendments to the Law on Public Gatherings, as well as improving police training, filling vacant posts and supplying equipment to intervention units.