Vera Pejic Sutor, President of SSM, Igor Rus and Petar Krunic, vice-presidents of SSM, Borislav Rus, President of the Serb Self-Government in Budapest, Jovanka Lastic, Director of the kindergarten, elementary school, grammar school and student dorm “Nikola Tesla“ in Budapest, Petar Lastic, Director of the SSM Serbian Institute, Julijana Kotorcevic, Director SSM Pedagogical Institute, Snezana Milivojevic, journalist and editor of the show “Srpski ekran“ (Serbian screen) on Hungarian TV and Dragan Jakovljevic, editor-in-chief of “Srpske nedeljne novine“ (Serbian daily) shared the current problems of the Serbian minority in Hungary. Among them, they mentioned the difficulties in keeping the Serbian minority informed in its mother tongue arising from the change in channel and air time of the show “Srpski ekran“. Namely, this show used to air on Tuesday at 2pm on channel 1 of the Hungarian national TV, but since 15 March it has been switched to the practically invisible time of 6 am on the “Danube” TV channel. This has drastically reduced its rating from 40 thousand viewers to just a few thousand.

As regards the Office for Cooperation with Diaspora and Serbs in the Region, the representatives of the Serb Self-Government in Hungary said that there have been some problems in communication and asked when the new Office director would to be elected because they believe that would overcome the current problems in the communication between the representatives of the diaspora and Serbs in the region and the mother country.

The SSM representatives said that a meeting of the Mixed Commission for the protection of minorities is the prerequisite for the resolution of the open and outstanding issues of the status of Serbs in Hungary because it would provide an official opportunity for both countries and minority representatives to have their say and sign a Protocol binding them to put into action what they agreed to. They also reminded the Chairman that it was Belgrade’s turn to organise the meeting of the Mixed Commission.

The three-member delegation of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, headed by Aleksandra Djurovic and comprising Dr Janko Veselinovic and Dr Milorad Mijatovic, paid an official visit to the Republic of Hungary, 4-5 May 2015.