THE FOLLOWING IS THE SPEECH OF THE SPEAKER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA IN ITS ENTIRETY:

"I would like to welcome you to the National Assembly and thank you for your interest in our work, which tells me that our future bankers and financial experts are interested in how laws and decisions are made at the highest state level.

As you know, soon after the elections on 3 April, we will have a new National Assembly legislature which will be an important event for our political and social life, since that parliament and the Government it elects will have a tremendous job to do. The previous period’s dynamic legislative activity was accompanied, in addition to our basics tasks as stipulated by the Constitution, by other endeavours that are of great importance for Serbia.

As you know, and I hope as citizens you also participated, the National Assembly had conducted and adopted amendments to the Constitution, in the part concerning the manner of electing judges and prosecutors. This sort of thing does not happen often in our political and parliamentary life, because any change in the Constitution is a long and complex process that requires maximum openness and participation of a very wide range of institutions and experts. This is the first change in the Constitution in the 15 years since its adoption.

At the beginning, I must emphasize that the Constitution has been changed only in the part that refers to our judiciary, that is, in the way the highest positions in the court and prosecution are elected. Those provisions have been deficient from the very beginning, since the Constitution was adopted, and Serbia had been receiving objections to them since 2007, only a few months after the Constitution was adopted. The common assessment of the relevant European institutions was that our way of electing judges and prosecutors allows greater influence of the other branches of government - legislative and executive in the selection of judges and prosecutors, and that this harms the democratic order, especially the independence and autonomy of the judiciary. The European Union had the most objections to that, mentioning this shortcoming in every annual report on Serbia's progress towards full membership.

In the past year, when we initiated the procedure to change the Constitution, we conducted a series of public hearings in the National Assembly on new constitutional solutions. When conducting public hearings, the Assembly invites the most famous experts from a certain field to hear their opinions and advice and then to incorporate them into the legal text. We had as guests our most prominent legal experts from various universities, we had lawyers, judges and prosecutors, we also had experts from the non-governmental sector dealing with the rule of law, as well as representatives of international professional organizations.

We conducted a rather complicated parliamentary procedure, which included multiple sittings of our Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues, as well as several plenary sessions to secure the required two-thirds support to both call a referendum and adopt the referendum decision. I would like to remind you that these changes were also supported by the citizens at the referendum held on 16 January, which is why I say hope you also participated in this part of the Constitutional amendment process.

So, the Constitution was changed in accordance with the procedure prescribed for such cases, as well as in accordance with the highest international standards applied in Europe today. I think we went a step further than that, because we tried to consult a very wide range of experts, representatives of the judiciary and all others interested in this issue, because we wanted to come up with a constitutional text that would gain the widest possible social consensus.

As for the parliament’s future work, there is no doubt that it will be extremely important, because we are entering a period in where it will be vital to preserve internal political and economic stability, which can only be possible when the institutions of our democracy are fully operational and responsibly perform their constitutional duties.

As you know, this is a very turbulent period for international relations, one that cannot bypass Serbia as very active on the international scene. First of all, I am thinking of the crisis in Ukraine, the consequences of which are being felt around whole world.

I must draw your attention to the fact that strained relations concerning Ukraine have been going on for at least eight years. Back in 2014, the countries of the European Union, as well as the US, UK and some other western countries, imposed economic sanctions on the Russian Federation due to the annexation of Crimea. Serbia did not join those sanctions because from the first moment it had a clear and principled position, the same it stands by today. Namely, from the beginning, we emphasized that we respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea, because we ourselves demand that the same be respected in our case. Thus, Serbia has shown that it demands respect for international law in the case of Kosovo-Metohija, its unilateral and illegal declaration of independence, as well as for any other part of the world and any other state.

At the same time, our decision not to impose sanctions on the Russian Federation is also in line with our position that economic sanctions and any other kind of pressure cannot be a way to solve international problems. Our position is strengthened by the fact that not so long ago we ourselves were exposed to economic sanctions and we know very well that this measure harms only the citizens and does not bring about any political results.

Our position regarding Ukraine remains unchanged to this day, when conflicts continue in Ukraine. As in the past eight years, we have full understanding for our views both in the West and the East. This confirms the principledness and responsibility of our foreign policy, which we have been pursuing for years.

The economic consequences of the crisis in Ukraine really are huge and you are witnesses that no country in the world, even the most developed ones, is immune to rising oil and food prices, for example, and these are economic staples. Unfortunately, we do not expect these disturbances to be short-lived, because the crisis has affected Russia, one of the world's largest producers and exporters of oil and gas, and together with Ukraine one of the world's largest producers of wheat, corn, sunflower and other staples of the crop market.

Serbia is not spared from these disturbances either, because it is deeply integrated into international economic flows. But, thanks to good preparation, organization, planning, and above all a well-conducted long-term economic policy, it is now in a position to absorb these shocks and not expose its population to shortages and other market upsets. Our reserves are well stocked, there is plenty of fuel and food and distribution goes smoothly. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many other countries, especially in our region, where the market situation is quite alarming, and in some countries, such as Montenegro or Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are almost no state commodity reserves.

Serbia is not a big enough economy to influence world trends, but it is strong enough to be able to meet our needs, as well as the needs of others to a certain extent. Our attitude towards the countries of the region is such that we build the best possible relations with them, because stability of our entire neighbourhood is our greatest interest. Serbia is the largest and fastest growing economy in this part of Europe and we do not want conflicts to hinder our economic development. That is why we have so far reached out with open hands to our neighbours on many occasions when we all found ourselves in the same trouble.

You remember that Serbia provided first aid in vaccines to Montenegro and North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina at a time when they had been waiting for the promised deliveries from the European Union for several months. By doing that, we helped them in a critical moment to vaccinate the most vulnerable parts of the population with the contingents they received from Serbia, primarily health workers and the oldest population.

We will do the same with scarce products, such as food, for example. We do not want to build our success and our development on the troubles of those closest to us. We cannot allow ourselves to lie on hundreds of thousands of tons of surplus food knowing of our closest neighbours’ shortages. I am convinced that the new government and the new parliament will work the same as before when it comes to cooperation with the neighbours and that we will once again confirm our commitment to good relations in the region.

In any case, the time ahead will be a huge challenge for the people who will lead our country and our society. Fortunately, and thanks to the good decisions we made in the previous period, many of which were not easy, we have full economic stability, high growth, constant inflow of direct foreign investment, constant employment growth and a stable dinar exchange rate, so we can face global crises as an organized and economically stable society. In my opinion, that is the most important task that everyone who wants to deal with state affairs has to deal with. The situation in the world is not stable at all, crises keep coming one after another, but we are showing that we know how to deal with them, not to allow them to disrupt our stability and economic growth and to come out of them even stronger.

Thank you once again for visiting the National Assembly!"