(...) Royaliste: What are the stakes and the prospects?

Prince Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh: One of the priority stakes is to rebuild ties with Serbia and to solve in a pragmatic way the questions of the “divorce”. There are common estates. Serbia-Montenegro was heiress of Milosevic and Tito’s Yugoslavia. It can be the occasion to bring old resentments up for discussion... or to try to make things fraternally. Beside the question of estates (embassies, boats of the Navy...), Belgrade was for all the regional metropolis, with the best universities, the best hospitals... Many Montenegrin students were studying there. If Serbia wants to radiate in the region, it has interest to be a welcome country, not only for Montenegrins, but also for Bosnians, Albanians, Roumanians, Bulgarians... It is necessary that poles of excellence be created in the region. It is the most urgent thing of the post-referendum period. In order that people do not always have to go to study in Paris, London or New York. There is the need for a recombining of the political scene, blocked up to now. Political parties were making alliances block against block. Now that the question is settled, people will be able to redefine themselves in relation with political projects.

Royaliste: What is the specificity of Montenegro. What are its assets?

P.N.P.N.: Obviously, it has no particular richness, but has a spectacular nature. Everyone thinks immediately tourism. But a country which does not have the possibility to develop itself its welcome facilities can only offer to others the benefits, in exchange of the creation of some jobs. It is not a prospect. In its article 1, the Constitution says Montenegro is an ecological State. That makes laugh everyone, because if nature is splendid, all what is built there is anti-ecological. But nevertheless I think that the idea is good. 20 years ago, it appeared completely utopian, but today it could carry the future of a small country of 600,000 inhabitants which has an extraordinary natural heritage. Durable development can be a strategy. And behind that, there are many channels which are not contradictory with tourism. I militate for that in Montenegro, for the promotion of this strategy because it requires to train people. It is necessary to educate. It would be necessary, for example, to create an institute where would be trained, for the region, specialists in agriculture, renewable energies, town planning... At the scale of a large country, it would not have a great impact, but at the one of a small State, it would not be negligible. If you have a university pole, you have an associated research pole, and if you have laboratories, you have industrial and production channels which start to create and give prospects for progression to young people. The other alternative is a Montenegro similar to Monte-Carlo. But it is not my ideal, even if princes start to be interested in ecology...