Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 20/07/2021
The demarcations and border issues between the Balkan’s neighboring countries continue to spark a lot of confusion and controversy, although each country’s territories are defined in line with the clearly established criteria.
Although politicians often (do not) try to make it clear that the redrawing of borders is unacceptable, there are resurging claims of the Balkan territory still being an unresolved issue, where each country claims the right to a part of another’s territory. The media, whose reports cite new borders in the region, also play a major role in rekindling such claims.
This can be seen from news reports published by the Serbian web portal Informer.rs and the Nacionalist.rs web portal, which state that Albania is taking part of the sea from our country.
”ALBANIA TAKING A PART OF THE SEA FROM MONTENEGRO, CROATIA HAS ALREADY SNATCHED AWAY PREVLAKA… YOU DIDN’T WANT TO BE IN STATE UNION WITH SERBIA AND THIS IS THE PRICE OF TREASON! The European Commission blocks Podgorica!” – is the title of Informer’s article which quotes the European Commission’s Montenegro progress report.
However, the report itself does not contain any such information as published by Informer, in fact, according to the Podgorica-based web portal “Dan”, it is therein stated that the sea border demarcation between Montenegro and Albania remains pending. This is stated in the European Commission’s report on Montenegro.
– Relations with Albania remained good with some further improvement in infrastructure and cross-border cooperation. Maritime delimitation between the two countries remains pending. The first meeting of the Interstate Commission for water management was held in September 2019 – The European Commission’s report reads, as quoted by Dan.
Also, the title of the article published by Informer indicates that the issue of Prevlaka, the sea border between Croatia and Montenegro, has been resolved in favor of Croatia, which is also not true.
The European Commission’s report reads that Montenegro’s relations with Croatia remained good “despite lack of developments regarding the pending border demarcation between Montenegro and Croatia”.
The two countries recently agreed to set up a commission to tackle the Prevlaka border issue during talks between the two foreign ministers in Podgorica.
To conclude, neither did Albania take away a part of Montenegro’s sea, nor was Prevlaka given to Croatia, as stated by Informer and Nacionalist.