Montenegro’s accession to the EU is facing one big hurdle – language.
Strictly speaking, Montengrin should become the EU’s 25th official language come time Montenegro joins. However, EU institutions are citing unnecessary translation costs and efforts in their push to get Croatian to cover for Montenegrin. This stems comes from the mistaken and outdated belief that “Serbo-Croatian” is still (politically) acceptable.
Yes, the peoples who speak the four successor languages to Serbo-Croatian have hardly any problems understanding each other when having a conversation, but the real differences start to appear in written, and especially administrative, language, with Croatian having diverged the most.
It's a major about-face. The EU championed and facilitated Montenegrin independence, but it appears unwilling to accept all of Montenegro's unique qualities, all for the sake of saving some euros in translation. Plus, it makes a mockery of the EU's much vaunted policy of multilingualism.
More about why “Serbo-Croatian” is no longer by clicking here
Photo credit: Ivan.Petrović.Poljak.001, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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