Milojko Spajić

Milojko Spajić was born on 24 September 1987 in Pljevlja, a town in the mountainous north of Montenegro, which was then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ^[1]. The north of the country has long lagged behind the coast in income and investment, and observers of his later career often noted that his political message about living standards drew on the experience of towns like his own.

He left the region to pursue an education that was unusually international for a Montenegrin of his generation. Spajić studied mathematics in Paris and then completed undergraduate work at Waseda University in Tokyo, one of Japan's leading private universities, before earning a master's degree in Singapore ^[2]. Along the way he acquired working knowledge of several languages, including Japanese, a detail that Montenegrin media returned to frequently once he entered politics.

Anyone asking who was Milojko Spajić before politics finds a finance professional rather than a party activist. He had no significant ties to the parties that dominated Montenegro during the three decades in which Milo Djukanović's Democratic Party of Socialists held power, a fact that later became central to his appeal ^[3].

After completing his studies, Spajić worked in investment banking and asset management in Asia. He spent time at Goldman Sachs in its Singapore office and later joined Das Capital, a Singapore-based investment firm, where he became a partner focused on markets in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe ^[2].

His financial career gave him a profile that almost no other figure in Montenegrin public life possessed: direct experience of global capital markets, fluency in the vocabulary of investors, and a network outside the Balkans. He also developed a public interest in financial technology and digital assets, and after entering government he spoke often about positioning Montenegro as a friendly jurisdiction for the technology sector ^[4].

That enthusiasm later generated scrutiny. Montenegrin and international outlets reported on his past contacts with Do Kwon, the South Korean founder of the collapsed Terraform Labs cryptocurrency venture, who was arrested in Podgorica in March 2023. Spajić acknowledged that an early meeting had taken place years before the collapse and rejected suggestions of any improper link, and the episode did not prevent his party's election victory that year ^[5].

Spajić entered government in December 2020, when he was appointed Minister of Finance and Social Welfare in the cabinet of Zdravko Krivokapić. That government was the first in thirty years not led by the Democratic Party of Socialists, and it recruited several technocrats without party affiliation, Spajić among them ^[3].

As finance minister he designed the program that made his name: Europe Now, adopted in late 2021. The reform abolished mandatory employee health insurance contributions, introduced a tax-free threshold on earnings, and raised the minimum wage from 250 to 450 euros per month, one of the sharpest single increases in the region ^[6]. Supporters credited the package with lifting take-home pay across the economy. Critics, including some economists and opposition figures, warned about the long-term cost to the health fund and the budget. The debate over its sustainability continued for years, but the program's popularity was not in doubt.

The Krivokapić government fell in early 2022, and Spajić left office. In June 2022 he and Jakov Milatović, the former economy minister who had co-authored the wage reforms, founded a political party named after the program: the Europe Now Movement (Pokret Evropa sad) ^[3]. The new party pitched itself as pro-European, economically focused, and free of the ethnic and identity disputes that had dominated Montenegrin politics since independence in 2006.

Spajić intended to run in the March 2023 presidential election, but Montenegro's electoral commission rejected his candidacy on the grounds that records showed he held residency in Serbia, which he disputed ^[7]. The party fielded Milatović instead, and Milatović won the presidency in April 2023, defeating the long-dominant Djukanović in a runoff. The result confirmed the movement's momentum months before the parliamentary vote.

In the early parliamentary election of 11 June 2023, the Europe Now Movement finished first with roughly a quarter of the vote, and President Milatović nominated Spajić as prime minister-designate ^[1]. Coalition talks stretched through the summer and became contentious over the role of pro-Serbian parties. The eventual arrangement brought in the For the Future of Montenegro alliance, with its leader Andrija Mandić elected speaker of parliament, a choice that drew criticism from some pro-Western commentators while Spajić insisted the government's European orientation was fixed ^[8].

Parliament confirmed his cabinet on 31 October 2023. At 36, Spajić became one of the youngest prime ministers in Montenegro's history and among the youngest serving heads of government in Europe at the time ^[1]. In his inaugural address he set out three priorities that would define his mandate: economic growth, the rule of law, and accession to the European Union.

Any account of Milojko Spajić achievements in office begins with the European Union file. Montenegro has been a candidate country since 2010 and opened accession negotiations in 2012, but progress had stalled for years amid political instability. Under Spajić's government the country received a positive Interim Benchmark Assessment Report (IBAR) from the European Commission in June 2024, a milestone confirming that Montenegro had met interim rule-of-law benchmarks and could begin closing negotiating chapters ^[9]. His government set the ambition of completing negotiations by 2026 and joining the EU by 2028, a timetable that EU officials described as demanding but that placed Montenegro at the front of the enlargement queue ^[9].

On the economic side, the government launched a successor package known as Europe Now 2 in 2024. It raised the minimum wage again, cut pension contributions paid by employees, and continued the strategy of boosting net wages that had powered the movement's rise ^[6]. The government also pursued fiscal consolidation measures and courted foreign investment, drawing on Spajić's finance background.

His coalition remained fractious. A government reshuffle in July 2024 expanded the majority and brought pro-Serbian parties deeper into the executive, prompting renewed debate about the balance between the country's NATO and EU commitments and the sensibilities of its pro-Belgrade constituencies ^[8]. Spajić repeatedly argued that a broad government was the price of stability in a parliament of many small parties, and that Montenegro's strategic direction toward Brussels was not negotiable. Relations between the prime minister and President Milatović also deteriorated after their joint rise; Milatović left the party he had co-founded in early 2024, citing disagreements over its direction ^[7].

Spajić married in 2022, and he and his wife Sutkana have children born during his time in front-line politics; he has kept his family largely out of public view, in line with his generally reserved personal style ^[1]. He is known for a casual public manner unusual among Balkan heads of government, frequent use of social media, and an informal register in interviews.

His time in Japan left a lasting mark. He speaks Japanese, has described the years at Waseda as formative, and has promoted closer economic ties between Montenegro and Asian investors since taking office ^[2]. Colleagues and journalists often describe him as data-driven and impatient with the ideological framing of Montenegrin politics, preferring to talk about wages, growth figures, and accession benchmarks.

Because Spajić remains in office, his record is still being written, and any Milojko Spajić biography is necessarily an interim account. What can already be said is that he changed the terms of political competition in Montenegro. The Europe Now wage reforms moved the country's debates away from identity questions and toward household income, and every major party has since had to answer his agenda on its own ground ^[6].

The basic Milojko Spajić facts also carry symbolic weight: a finance professional from a northern town, educated in Paris, Tokyo, and Singapore, who reached the prime minister's office at 36 without passing through the old party machines. For a generation of Montenegrins who came of age after independence, his rise suggested that the long era of a single dominant party was genuinely over ^[3].

The open questions are the ones his critics raise: whether the wage-first fiscal model is sustainable, whether a coalition spanning pro-European and pro-Serbian forces can deliver coherent policy, and whether the 2028 EU target will be met. The European Commission's 2024 assessment that Montenegro is the most advanced candidate country gives his government a credible claim to progress, and the outcome of the accession push will likely define how his tenure is remembered ^[9].