J. Joksimović presented awards for best student papers on EU

December 10 2021 | Belgrade

J. Joksimović presented awards for best student papers on EU

Minister of European Integration Jadranka Joksimović has presented awards to the students who have won the competition for the best student papers on the EU for 2021, which, according to her, has gathered interested and educated young people ready to contribute to the progress of their country and the European integration process.

Awards include cash prizes of RSD 85,000, 55,000 and 35,000, as well as the possibility of employment in the Ministry of European Integration. The winners of this year’s competition are students of master academic studies Sava Mitrović and Jovana Popova from the Faculty of Political Sciences and Ivona Leskur from the Faculty of Philosophy.

They received the awards for the following papers: “Green Agenda for the Western Balkans: Challenges and perspectives of green transition and sustainable development in Serbia”, “EU enlargement policy: revised methodology, new incentives and confusion over terminology”, and “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind: advantages of the Republic of Serbia in overcoming the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and achieving a sustainable future”

The Minister has emphasised that the goal of the fifth MEI competition was, again, to hear the visions and opinions of students on current topics related to the accession process and EU policies that Serbia is adopting.

According to her, 17 papers were submitted to MEI and they were assessed by professors Jelica Stefanović-Štambuk, Vladimir Vuletić and Maja Lukić Radović.

“The topics of the winning papers show that our students understand and know the process well and see its wider aspects, and that they follow the developments in Europe and around the world as part of common policies”, said the Minister, stressing that the last year’s winner got a job at the Ministry.

The winner of the first prize, Sava Mitrović, has said that it is important to include young people in the process and for young people to analyse and study the process, which is seen by the public only in the context of criteria and the policy of conditioning and not as a transformative process of the entire society which is vital for a fundamental change that Serbia should make.

Popova and Leskur have expressed their belief that the competition encourages young people to discuss the aspects that must be regulated in Serbia for the sake of the common future for everyone.

The Minister presented the awards after the introductory panel of the conference ‘Serbia’s Youth on the Future of Europe – Ideas and Vision’, which was organised as Serbia’s contribution to the EU platform ‘Conference on the Future of Europe” and which she opened.

The speakers of this first in a series of conferences on youth to be organised by the Ministry of European Integration included Damjan Bergant, the Slovenian Ambassador to Belgrade, Mateja Norčič Štamcar, Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia, prof. Vladan Đokić, PhD, Rector of the University of Belgrade, Mihailo Vesović, representative of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Milan Savić, the State Secretary at the Ministry of Youth and Sport.

Source: Tanjug