The Head of the Parliamentary Friendship Group with Romania Sinisa Stamenkovic said that in the course of the Bucharest visit in February 2012, the Friendship Group’s delegation met with the members of both Romanian Houses of Parliament, as well as representatives of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They discussed the position of the Romanian ethnic minority in Serbia and national identity issues of the Vlach ethnic minority. They agreed to create a mixed interparliamentary group to review these issues so as to gain deeper insight into and offer solutions to the open issues, stressed Sinisa Stamenkovic.

The participants commended the dialogues on the position of the Romanian and Vlach ethnic minority in Serbia and suggested initiatives to overcome the open issues between Romania and Serbia regarding the position of these ethnic minorities. The initiatives will be presented to the Romanian parliamentary delegation on its planned return visit to the National Assembly.

In addition to the Head of the Parliamentary Friendship Group with Romania, the meting was attended by MPs Dragan Acimovic, Srboljub Zivanovic, Milan Lapcevic, Jon Magda and Milovan Radovanovic, members of the Parliamentary Friendship Group. The meting was also attended by the Chairman of the National Assembly’s Inter-Ethnic Relations Committee Miletic Mihajlovic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative Svetlana Stankovic, Director of the Republic of Serbia Human and Minority Rights Directorate Nenad Djurdjevic, representative of the Romanian ethnic minority National Council Lenuca Caran, Secretary of the Vlach National Council Bojan Modrlanovic, Vice President of the Vlach National Council Miodrag Markovic, representatives of the Democratic Movement of Romanians in Serbia Dimitrije Kracunovic and Aleksandar Balan, representative of the Alliance of Vojvodina Romanians Dr Jon Sfera, Vice President of the Vlach Democratic Party of Serbia Novica Njagojevic, former President of the Vlach ethnic minority National Council Zivoslav Lazic, as well as representatives of Romanian and Vlach associations in Serbia: President of the Danube Association for Vlach Culture and Tradition Tihan Matasarevic, representative of the Society for the Culture, Language and Religion of Pomoravlje Vlachs-Romanians Ivica Glisic and the Chairman of the Executive Board of the Vlach Forum Dragomir Dragic.