The visit was aimed at obtaining information on the activities of the Capital City as well as the implementation of the Agreement on Cooperation between the Parliament of Montenegro and the Union of Municipalities.

President of the Parliament of Montenegro Mr Darko Pajović expressed gratitude for today’s hospitality and pointed out that the Capital City and the state Parliament continued what had been set as the foundation of good cooperation via the Memorandum between the Union of Municipalities and the state Parliament.

- Raising cooperation to the level which would enable better effectiveness of both local parliament and the state Parliament, with, of course, great responsibility of everyone, is a goal towards which all of us strive, pointed out Mr Pajović.

Mr Pajović also emphasised that the state institutions must be open to the citizens, hear their problems, and then solve concrete problems in accordance with their capabilities. Improvement of the standard of living of citizens is a goal of all of us, he added.

The visiting of the President of the state Parliament to local parliaments is something that has not been common practice previously.

- One of fundamental postulates of democracy, and even rules if you will, in Europe, is that everything starts with the citizens, and the local self-government towards the state bodies. Therefore this visit today, and all the future visits, are aimed at meeting standards in the process of the European integration of Montenegro, concluded Mr Pajović.

The interlocutors pointed out the significance of intensifying cooperation between the Capital City and the Parliament of Montenegro and estimated that the cooperation should be continued in the upcoming period, in order to create conditions for greater quality of life of citizens, on all levels.

In that sense, the significance of several laws already in parliamentary procedure was emphasised. Stronger cooperation of state and local parliaments is required in order for those laws to have the best application in practice and in order to be able to ensure effective action of services and bodies for the benefit of institutions of the system and all citizens of Podgorica and Montenegro.

It was agreed at the meeting that, in the process of adopting the legal solution, the professional services and bodies of the Capital City should be consulted at a more significant rate by giving certain suggestions and observations from the level of the local self-government, in order to draft as good as possible legal solutions which would be possible to implement in their entirety.