The Minister of European Integration, Tanja Miščević, said that today in Strasbourg she had a “very open conversation” with the Commissioner for Enlargement, Oliver Várhelyi, about the “most important elements of progress that Serbia needs to show in the European integration process”.
“I had a meeting with Commissioner Várhelyi today in Strasbourg. This is not my first meeting with the Commissioner, but it is in this capacity. We had a very open meeting, which was actually a summarisation of the annual report and an accentuation of the most important elements of progress that Serbia needs to show in the European integration process,” Miščević told Tanjug.
She added that they also discussed the need to show citizens the benefits of the European integration process for everyday life.
“One of the excellent examples is the emergency aid in energy, amounting to EUR 165 million, which was presented by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, during her visit to Belgrade. These funds are used to help citizens and small and medium-sized enterprises. This is a big and important matter that speaks of the benefit of EU approximation,” emphasized Miščević.
On Monday, in Brussels, Miščević had a meeting with the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, representatives of the European External Action Service, and all EU member states.
As Miščević told Tanjug, Commissioner Johanson “emphasized cooperation in preventing migratory flows, but we also opened a discussion on the implementation of obligations from the chapters related to justice and security, as well as the fight against organised crime.”
With the representatives of the European External Action Service, the topic was “alignment with EU foreign policy decisions and other elements of the Union’s foreign policy, such as participation in EU missions, whether military or civilian and accepting decisions in other international organisations,” Miščević said.
She pointed out that this topic “is very present because it is quite clear that alignment with foreign policy positions is one of the most important priorities in defining the direction of our relations with the EU”.
Regarding the meeting with representatives of all member states in Brussels, Miščević said that together with Branislav Stojanović, the Assistant Minister of Justice and Goran Lukić from the Ministry of Interior, she presented the priorities in the rule of law, and the work plans of the Government of Serbia.
“We especially emphasised what needs to be done in the domain of the rule of law and media freedom,” Miščević said.
The Minister spoke with representatives of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Today, she first met with David McAllister, who is the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and was previously the rapporteur for Serbia, as well as Andor Deli, who is in the Serbia delegation.
Miščević announced that tomorrow she would continue discussions within the Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee - a joint committee of representatives of the Assembly of Serbia and the European Parliament.
As the European Parliament announced earlier, the alignment of Serbia with the common European policy will be discussed at this regular meeting, and the dialogue between Belgrade and Priština will also be talked about.
The planned topics are membership negotiations, primarily the benchmarks in chapters 23 and 24, then chapter 27 on the environment and climate change, and cluster 3 for competitiveness and inclusive growth with a focus on economic development, as the European Parliament announced.
Source: Tanjug
