Germany Tells Montenegrins to Stay at Home

The German ambassador in Montenegro, Gudrun Steinacker, on Monday said Montenegrin citizens planning to live and work in Germany illegally will "certainly fail to succeed".

She said it was difficult to obtain accurate data on the number of citizens from the north of Montenegro who had gone to Germany to find jobs but noted that "a few thousand people are being mentioned in public.

"I appeal to everyone not to go there or try illegally to find a job there because they will certainly fail," the ambassador told the daily newspaper, Danas.  

The government is being urged to take measures to stop large-scale migration from northern regions after local NGOs reported that about 4,000 people had left five towns in the north over the past four months.

Euromost, an NGO from the northern town of Bijelo Polje, the town most affected by this wave of migration, says more than 1,500 people left the north in the last month.

Others have also left the towns of Rozaje, Berane and Pljevlja. Most have gone to Germany and Luxembourg, trying to obtain asylum, which they are unlikely to obtain.

After the expiration of the three-month period, which is how long they can legally remain in these European countries, they refuse to return and instead remain illegally, the NGO said.

Montenegro has an official unemployment rate of 15 per cent. But the jobless rate in the north of the country is higher, according to estimates. A third of the jobless are university graduates under 30 years of age.

The average monthly salary in the country is around 490 euro, but, according to recent data from the Tax Administration, one in every eight people lives on less than 200 euros a month.

According to the latest report of...