Duško Marković

Duško Marković was born on July 6, 1958, in Mojkovac, in northern Montenegro. At the time, Montenegro was a constituent republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, rather than an independent state. His education and first employment belonged to the Yugoslav period, while much of his later career concerned the institutions and international relationships of independent Montenegro. He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Kragujevac, in Serbia, obtaining the professional qualification with which he entered working life. ^[1]

His first documented professional appointment was in the legal service of the Brskovo mine in Mojkovac, where he worked from 1983 to 1986. This was a legal position in an industrial enterprise, not an elected political office. After studying outside Montenegro, he had returned to his hometown for employment. His departure from the mine took him into municipal administration, several years before his first appointment in the republican government. ^[1]

In 1986, Marković became secretary of the Municipal Assembly of Mojkovac. He remained in that post until 1989, when he became president of the municipal assembly, serving until 1991. These successive appointments placed him first in the assembly's administrative machinery and then at its head. By the time he left Mojkovac for a position in the republican government, he had accumulated experience in both legal employment and local government, the first stages of a career that would continue through several changes in Montenegro's constitutional position. ^[1]

The move into national administration came in 1991, when Marković became secretary-general of the Government of Montenegro. He held the position until 1998. During this period he also served in the Montenegrin parliament, with a parliamentary tenure recorded from 1996 to 2001. His government and parliamentary service thus overlapped rather than forming a simple sequence of one office after another. These appointments established him within the republic's central institutions well before he became widely known outside the country. ^[1]

From 1998 to 2005, he was assistant minister of internal affairs responsible for the State Security Service. In 2005, he became director of the Agency for National Security, commonly known by its Montenegrin abbreviation, ANB, and remained in charge until 2010. His directorship spanned Montenegro's transition to independence in 2006. The distinction between these two security appointments is useful: his responsibility for state security began before the ANB directorship, and the agency position was not his first senior government role. ^[1]

Marković moved into a different set of responsibilities in 2010, initially as a minister without portfolio and subsequently as deputy prime minister and minister of justice. His justice portfolio lasted until 2015, while his deputy premiership continued through 2016. He also temporarily managed the culture ministry and, later, the interior ministry. By then, his record included municipal leadership, central administration, security institutions, and cabinet work. Within the Democratic Party of Socialists, or DPS, he became deputy president in 2015. His eventual selection as prime minister followed this long progression through public office and the governing party. ^[1]

On November 28, 2016, Montenegro's parliament elected a government headed by Marković. He succeeded Milo Đukanović as prime minister and took charge of the country's forty-first government. The change put a different politician at the head of the cabinet without removing the DPS from power. For Marković, it was a move from coordinating particular areas of policy as deputy prime minister to assuming responsibility for the government's overall programme and its presentation to parliament. ^[2]

His appointment also changed the international dimension of his work. Earlier positions had concentrated heavily on domestic institutions, especially administration, justice, and security. As prime minister, he represented the government in the final stage of Montenegro's entry into NATO and during continuing negotiations with the European Union. These were separate processes with different requirements and outcomes: NATO membership was completed during his first year in office, while EU membership remained a longer negotiation. ^[1][3][4]

Marković did not start either process from the beginning. NATO had invited Montenegro to accession talks in December 2015, and the alliance's foreign ministers had signed its accession protocol in May 2016, before he became prime minister. His government's responsibility was to carry the NATO process through its remaining steps while pursuing the wider European agenda. The chronology limits how much of the outcome can reasonably be attributed to any single administration, but it also identifies the concrete decision completed during his premiership. ^[3]

Montenegro formally joined NATO on June 5, 2017. Marković and Foreign Minister Srđan Darmanović attended the ceremony at the United States Department of State in Washington, where Montenegro deposited its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty. That act made the country the alliance's twenty-ninth member. It completed the legal procedure for membership after ratification by the existing allies. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attended the ceremony, which was hosted by United States Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. ^[3]

Relations with the United States also featured prominently in Marković's first year as prime minister. In 2017, he hosted United States Vice President Mike Pence in Montenegro. The visit brought a senior American official to the country in the same year that it entered the alliance. Together, the Washington accession ceremony and the Pence visit were prominent events in a period when Marković's public responsibilities increasingly involved meetings with foreign leaders as well as the domestic cabinet work that had occupied his previous years. ^[1][3]

The European Union track advanced more slowly. On June 30, 2020, an accession conference opened negotiations on Chapter 8, competition policy, the last of Montenegro's screened negotiating chapters. All thirty-three screened chapters were then open, while three had been provisionally closed. Competition policy concerned practical rules governing markets, including antitrust enforcement, mergers, and state aid. Opening this chapter extended the negotiations to the full set of screened policy areas; it did not mean that Montenegro had satisfied every condition for membership. ^[4]

The EU set closing benchmarks for the competition chapter, including adequate administrative and judicial capacity and a satisfactory record of enforcement. The European Commission's 2020 assessment also identified further work across the accession agenda, including the rule of law and the functioning of institutions. Marković's European record consequently contains both a completed objective and an unfinished one: Montenegro became a NATO member during his tenure, but remained an EU candidate negotiating the terms and practical requirements of accession. ^[3][4][5]

By the final year of Marković's premiership, the coronavirus pandemic had changed the conditions in which his government operated. Montenegro's dependence on tourism made restrictions on movement and the interruption of international travel especially damaging. The European Commission's October 2020 report described the pandemic's effects on economic activity and public finances, alongside the country's existing economic challenges. The government faced the immediate tasks of responding to a public health emergency and supporting an economy exposed to the loss of visitors. ^[5]

The parliamentary election in August 2020 produced the majority from which a new government was formed. On December 4, parliament approved a cabinet headed by Zdravko Krivokapić, ending Marković's tenure as prime minister. The incoming administration received forty-one votes in the eighty-one-seat assembly. Its formation ended the long period in which the DPS had remained in government and moved Marković's party out of executive power. This was more than another exchange of prime ministers within the same governing party: the cabinet itself passed to a different parliamentary grouping. ^[6]

Leaving the premiership did not end Marković's political activity. In June 2024, he presented a new political organisation, the Party of European Progress, known as SEP. Reporting on its launch identified him as one of its initiators and described its declared European orientation. The move created a separate party vehicle for a politician whose earlier ascent had taken place within the DPS. His public explanation emphasised differences over Montenegro's political direction rather than a withdrawal from public affairs. ^[7]

His career crossed several distinct parts of Montenegro's government: municipal office in Mojkovac, administration in the republican government, responsibility for state security, cabinet service, and the premiership of an independent country. He spent longer in senior public office before becoming prime minister than he spent leading the cabinet. The four-year premiership nevertheless brought the international events most readily associated with his name, particularly the completion of NATO accession and the continuation of negotiations with the European Union. ^[1][3][4]

Marković's place in Montenegro's recent history rests on these decisions and transitions. The country entered NATO in 2017, opened its final screened EU negotiating chapter in 2020, and installed a government outside the DPS later that year. His subsequent participation in forming SEP added a new affiliation to a political career previously associated with the long-governing party. The record connects him both to the expansion of Montenegro's international commitments and to the domestic change that brought his administration to an end. ^[3][4][6][7]