The picturesque country is in pole position to be the next EU member state but organised crime and corruption remain stumbling blocks to accession

Kotor’s picture-perfect old town and its setting surrounded by rocky mountains dropping straight to a long bay have earned it first place in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel cities list this year.

But the Adriatic idyll of shady limestone alleyways and imposing baroque churches has been spoiled by a spate of armed clashes between criminal gangs, which has led to the government sending in anti-terrorist police to quell the situation and put the city on “lockdown”.

Six incidents in three months have included gunfights and a murder, according to the reporting network Balkan Insight.

Tourists visiting Montenegro rarely face trouble, and the tourism ministry has told the Guardian Kotor is entirely safe for foreign visitors, of whom there were more than 1.5 million last year including tens of thousands of Britons.

But the violence has highlighted serious concerns about rampant organised crime and corruption that lurk behind Montenegro’s growing reputation as a tourist paradise.

“Several incidents in Kotor in a short time period [have] affected perceptions, caused doubt and, in some people, even fear that they are not safe in this town,” the interior minister, Goran Danilović, said.

“I have ordered the urgent taking of further measures to make citizens as well as tourists feel safe, and to have perpetrators of crimes brought to justice. There is a challenge to face, of combating organised crime.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A hotel in Kotor’s rugged old town. The tourism industry has tried to quell safety concerns. Photograph: PR

The most recent incident was a gunfight on 3 June, reportedly between rival drug gangs operating in Kotor.

In April, a man thought to be linked to a narcotics gangster was murdered. The city was in the past linked to such groups, with the notorious drug kingpin Darko Saric reportedly a major investor, and one of his associates was shot in the main square in 2010.

Montenegro’s organised crime circles grew rich and powerful during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, and gangs involved in cocaine smuggling and money laundering are particularly active in Kotor. Criminal groups have operated with the connivance of officials and state institutions in some cases, according to Mans, a Montenegrin NGO focusing on organised crime and corruption, which it says are “overwhelming problems” in the country.

While the situation in the town is calm with a heavier police presence than usual, the director of the Tourism Organisation of Kotor said he was worried about the potential impact on the local economy.

“We have to be worried and we have to save the town from any criminal activities,” Mirza Krcic said. “In the last few years we have had growing activities of drug trafficking.”

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Nonetheless, he insisted that Montenegro was as safe as any country in the region, and the only problems encountered by the half a million tourists who visited last year were rare incidents of pickpocketing, a view shared by others in the local tourism industry.

“Despite there being some unfortunate problems, like every country there will always be some local clashes – it happens in western Europe and the US,” said Oliver Corlette, managing director at the Porto Montenegro resort near Kotor.

Montenegro’s tourism sector is expected to be one of the three fastest-growing in the world over the next decade, according to the World Tourism and Travel Council, capitalising on its picturesque coastal cities, stunning mountainous coast, and rugged interior.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rooftops in Budva. Organised crime gangs grew powerful during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Photograph: Alamy

Since it declared independence from its union with Serbia in 2006, the country, with a population of just 622,000, has become a favoured destination for independent travellers and Europe’s glitterati.

Billionaire Nat Rothschild owns a stake in the Porto Montenegro resort, and held his 40th birthday there, with guests including the British politician Peter Mandelson, tennis star Novak Djokovic, and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, another shareholder in the resort.

Montenegro’s development puts it in pole position to be the next EU member state, some time after 2020. But organised crime and corruption remain stumbling blocks to accession, as Danilović acknowledges, saying that law enforcement in the past was “not adequate”.

Ljubomir Filipović, until recently the deputy mayor of nearby Budva, said he feared that the “turf war” in Kotor would create the impression that Montenegro was an unsafe place and jeopardise Montenegro’s EU accession process.

“There’s an enormous problem with organised crime,” said a diplomat from an EU country, saying that links between families in Montenegro’s close-knit society make “it difficult to know which knot to undo first”, despite recent progress in tackling high-level corruption.

“But I don’t think that unless tourists are threatened or hurt, they will care too much,” the diplomat added, who did not wish to be named.