Anyone who wants to get behind the wheel in Montenegro can get a driver’s license in just a couple of months (if he/she had never had a national driver’s license issued in another country before). Here we will tell you what to do, in detail and in the same order that the future driver will have in reality.
Algorithm for obtaining a driver’s license in Montenegro
To obtain a driver’s license, a person must do the following:
At the same time, it is necessary to obtain a ‘boravak’ (temporary residence permit, or a document giving the right of temporary residence in the territory of Montenegro). Without a boravak, for example, Ukrainians or Russians can reside only 30 days without a visa or 90 days with it.
There are several reasons for obtaining the temporary residence permit in Montenegro:
- Employment or entrepreneurial activity.
- Seasonal labor activity.
- Medical treatment.
- Education, traineeship, research activities.
- Family reunion.
- Existence of real estate in Montenegro.
- Other grounds provided by law.
When a person has a boravak, he or she, as a temporary resident of Montenegro, must pay taxes monthly. But now he/she is entitled to have a 98% discount on medical services and medicines in hospitals of Montenegro, receiving a medical record and personal card. The latter becomes the main document for residing. This plastic card is shown when checking documents.
Registering in a driving school and passing a theoretical exam
A person who wants to get a driver’s license in Montenegro has the right to choose any driving school and declare that he/she wants to study in it. Before the applicant for a driver’s license begins to be taught in the school, he or she should produce his/her passport and boravak. The cost of tuition is 280 euros (both exams, tuition and the exams themselves). After that, you immediately get tutorials. They can be both in paper and in electronic form. At the end, learning tests are taken. The tutorials are ten variants of tests with answers and a self-teaching manual with pictures. You can prepare for the exam yourself and with an instructor at the school. But lectures as such are not offered, but rather they train a person to choose the correct answers in the test.
Before you take the theoretical exam, you need to produce a medical certificate.
You must get at least 60 points out of 70 possible in the theoretical exam. The exam is taken in Serbian (you can have a dictionary). Tests are given on paper, there are only four pages: a page with pictures of permitted parking and overtaking, a page with signs/police/passing an intersection, a page with car parts (text) and a “Road Safety” page (also text). The duration of the theoretical exam is one hour (more than enough). The result can be found on the phone on the same day.
You should pay extra 30 euros for the re-take (and only one more attempt is given).
Getting a medical certificate
In health centers (clinics are called so in Montenegro), you have to pay 38 euros and spend about an hour to be examined by an ophthalmologist, a psychiatrist and a certificate processing. It should be provided to the driving school as quickly as possible (ideally, after registering in it). The certificate will be given on hand after receiving a certificate confirming of successful completion of the driving school.
Sometimes an ophthalmologist receives patients elsewhere. But any local resident is aware of where the ophthalmologic clinic is located, and will easily tell you the right address.
Practical driving test
Driving instruction begins after passing the theoretical exam on the knowledge of traffic rules. The instructor and you must agree upon a schedule for attending lessons. Ideally, you should train 45 minutes daily. Separate additional payments for gasoline are not required. Someone will need a month, and someone will master driving in a week – the period depends on the individual characteristics of the student and his/her motivation. First, you are taught to start, to back up. Then they teach you to park and start on a hill. Actually, the training ground consists of the following elements: angled and perpendicular (garage) parking, also parallel parking and starting from the reverse slope.
The most difficult thing for those who are not yet very good at Serbian is to overcome the language barrier.
After the instructor finds the training complete, the driving school’s student receives the date of the practical driving test.
Usually on this day everyone who wants to take the exam come from different schools. With the inspector and instructor, each student gets into the car and demonstrates driving skills, first at the training ground, and then around the town. The tasks at the training ground are simple: to start, to back up, to drive up the hill, to stop on the hill, to start on it, a reverse angled parking, reverse garage and reverse parallel ones. You can make three mistakes at most.
It’s in montenegrin inspectors’ nature to provoke students to stop in the wrong places and the like. It is necessary to strictly follow the rules, and the exam will be passed. The student will receive congratulations and will be invited to get a certificate of completion of the driving school. At the same time, they give back a medical certificate.
The procedure for obtaining a driver’s license
A driver’s license isn’t obtained immediately. You must first come to the municipal government, show your passport, certificate of completion of the driving school and pay two taxes – 5 euros (for photos) and 10 euros (for fingerprinting).
Then the regulations come into effect. The driving license is processed from three days to a week. Having provided the documents on Monday, you can get the finished driver’s license on Friday. You also immediately obtain an International Driving Permit, valid for ten years, for which no additional papers are needed.
If a person already have a national driving license (for example, Russian), and it is valid, there is no need in obtaining montenegrin one. But if you still don’t have an International Driver’s Permit in Montenegro, you can easily and quiсkly process it on our website. With an international driving license, you can drive drive along the roads of Montenegro!
Published March 11, 2019 • 6m to read
