Minister of European Integration Jadranka Joksimović estimated today that the signing of two grant agreements with the EU within the sector budget support is another good news for Serbia following the EU Strategy for the Western Balkan countries that was adopted yesterday.
In her press statement in the Government of Serbia, Joksimović emphasised that such agreements are not awarded to all EU candidate countries, since the money concerned goes directly to the budget system of the country that the agreement has been signed with.
“Therefore, there is also a greater accountability and transparency of spending of these funds. This is a demonstration of utmost confidence in a candidate country”, Joksimović said.
She added that Serbia has been enjoying such confidence for several years now and in this sense she recalled that two more agreements were previously signed through sector budget support.
The Minister stated that the first agreement was a EUR 80 million grant for the public administration reform and that the second one amounted to EUR 27.4 million for the reform of the education sector.
“Today we have signed a grant of EUR 28 million for integrated border management, which means that our border controls should ensure free movement of people and capital, but also to ensure enhanced control in the context of migrant crisis, which is extremely important both for the EU and for us”, Joksimović said.
She added that the agreement would help Serbia, in a most cutting-edge way, to achieve the integrated border management.
She said that Serbia proved to be a reliable partner to the EU and also to its own citizens, and that this important money would, once it has been used, contribute to Serbia’s credibility both as EU’s partner and as a candidate for EU membership.
“All these funds, plus around EUR 200 million a year from pre-accession assistance that we have been receiving from the EU for years now, indeed make the Union the largest donor to Serbia. It is important that our citizens are aware of this fact and I believe that it will contribute to an increased support to European integration in Serbia”, Joksimović concluded.
Source: Tanjug
