The meeting, led by Committee Chairperson Elvira Kovacs, was primarily about Serbia’s European path and its European perspective. Brophy said that Ireland strongly supports Serbia’s path, adding that it is ready to offer its cooperation and good practice experiences to help Serbia progress on the path to European integration.

Elvira Kovacs said that our country is ready to open cluster 3 and expressed hope that it will finally do so, following an over two-year standstill. All those present agreed that the EU is not complete without having the Western Balkans as part of it and that Serbia has gone too far with the accession process to give up now, which remains its chief foreign policy goal.

The topics of the meeting were the support given by the citizens of Serbia to European integration, the understanding of the path and the way in which these two perspectives can be improved.

Elvira Kovacs informed the guests of the Committee's scope of work and expressed the hope that cooperation between the two parliaments would improve, which the Chair of the Irish Parliament’s Committee on European Affairs Colm Brophy also agreed with and announced the imminent opening of the Irish Embassy in Belgrade, which will, as he pointed out, raise the overall cooperation between the two countries and the connection between the two peoples, to a higher level.

On behalf of the delegation of the Irish Parliament’s Committee on European Affairs, the meeting was also attended by Committee Deputy Chair Brendan Howlin and Political Advisor Brian Cox, and on behalf of the Natrional Assembly’s European Integration Committee by members and deputy members Milan Radin, Branislav Josifovic, Sanja Dzajic, Dr Ana Jakovljevic, Robert Kozma, Ksenija Markovic and Dragan Janjic.