At the sitting of the Culture and Education Committee held on 6 July 2006, the Minister of Culture in the Government of the Republic of Serbia, Dragan Kojadinovic, informed deputies of the conclusions of the Second Council of South-Eastern European Ministers of Culture, held in Varna, Bulgaria, from 22 to 25 June 2006. The council adopted a Cultural Co-Operation Action Plan covering South-Eastern European countries; it was agreed to build a regional electronic cultural heritage database, to implement a cultural heritage rehabilitation programme, and to harmonise regional legislation with EU standards.

Mr Kojadinovic also said that one of the conclusions coming out of his Brussels meeting with Jan Fiegel, EU Commissioner for Culture, was that the field of culture and information should be granted a ‘no-track’ accession programme, regardless of all difficulties associated with joining the EU.

According to Mr Kojadinovic, a Cinema Bill was being drafted. The bill was currently under review at the Ministry of Finance; an additional anti-monopoly law to prevent unauthorised media monopolies was also in the pipeline.

The deputies posed questions about conclusions of the Committee’s 35^th sitting, which saw the adoption of the Ministry of Culture’s 2005 Activity Report. Reports on budget assets expended, on activities of cultural institutions in Kosovo and Metohia, and on competitions for Ministry funding will, according to Mr Kojadinovic, be submitted at a later date.

The Foreign Affairs Committee forwarded a letter sent by the Serbian Consulate-General in Graz, Austria, referring to an initiative on the part of the parliament of the Austrian province of Carinthia for establishing co-operation with the Serbian Assembly at the same time an exhibition of Serbian painter Snezana Vujovic Nikolic is held at the Carinthia Parliament building. Members of the Culture and Information Committee proposed that deputy Miroslav Jankovic should officially open the exhibition, which is to serve as a start for establishing co-operation between the Carinthian parliament and the Serbian Assembly.

The Committee ruled to form a team made up of its members to visit cultural institutions throughout Serbia according to a pre-arranged plan to directly get information on the situation there. The deputies asked the Minister of Culture to tell them which cultural institutions came into Serbia’s purview after the separation of Montenegro.

The Committee’s next sitting is to discuss the Activity Report of the Republic Broadcasting Agency.

The sitting was chaired by the Committee’s chairman, Aleksandar Lazarevic...