Today, the Parliament of Montenegro amended the Law on the Petrović-Njegoš Royal Dynasty, returning to it the “Kruševac” Castle in Podgorica, its former winter residence, built in 1891.
It is also foreseen that the descendants of the dynasty, along with the Castle, will also be given the associated land and that the costs of reconstruction and furnishing will be borne by the state from the capital budget.
The law also states that descendants of the dynasty cannot sell the “Kruševac” Castle, nor alienate the land in any other way, but the only “buyer” can be the state at the price determined on the day of acquiring the property.
Provisions were removed from the law that provided that, if the most famous Montenegrin dynasty has no male descendants, the oldest female child should continue the tradition.
The amendment to the law stipulates that the work of the Petrović-Njegoš Foundation will be financed with 100,000 euros per year from the state budget.
President of the Parliament of Montenegro Andrija Mandic declared that “this is a great day for Montenegro”.
He said that he believed that on the basis of that law, “the return of property to the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) and other religious communities, and to our Karađorđević dynasty… will begin, so that it does not end only with the (return) of the confiscated (property) in 1918, but also that which was confiscated in 1945, to be returned to the people to whom it belonged.”
The text of the law states that in 1918 there was a “violent annexation of Montenegro from Serbia” because the ruling Europe Now Movement (PES) refused to delete the adjective “violent”.
Part of the analyst claimed that the story about the word “violent” is actually a “smoke screen” to hide the intention to return the property to Karađorđević.
At the end of last year, PES first requested that the word “violent” be deleted, but in April, after harsh reactions from the public, it gave up on that request.
The Democratic People’s Party (DNP) and the New Serbian Democracy (NSD) then demanded the complete deletion of Article 1 of that law, in which the term “forcible annexation” is used, requesting that the word “annexation” not even be written.
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