PODGORICA:Montenegro unveiled its first passport in some 90 years on Friday, two years after declaring independence, and said it hoped to agree visa-free travel with the European Union soon.
The new rust-red passport replaces the blue Yugoslav document that Montenegrins have carried since the mid-1990s, when they remained the only members of the rump federation along with Serbia.
It will also carry biometric identifiers — physical characteristics of the passport-holder such as fingerprints or iris scans — as sought by the EU.
“These documents are an important condition for our country to get on the Schengen White List (for visa-free travel),” Interior Minister Jusuf Kalemperovic said at a ceremony awarding the first passports to top university students.
Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic said the government had specifically set the date to coincide with the EU’s ‘Europe Day” to highlight its commitment to EU membership.
Apart from Slovenia and Croatia, all other ex-Yugoslav nations have needed a visa to travel to the EU since the wars of Yugoslavia’s breakup in the 1990s. Albanians also require visas.
Montenegro, an Adriatic republic of some 650,000 people, voted to end its union with Serbia in May 2006 and has since enjoyed strong growth and a positive image as a tourism hotspot.
The last, although unrecognised, passports with Montenegro on them were issued by the government-in-exile in 1919, after the country was annexed by Serbia.

Izvor / Reuters