National Assembly Speaker Nebojsa Stefanovic thanked GIZ and everybody involved in the cooperation projects with the National Assembly being developed as part of Serbia’s progress to European integration. Clearly defining the challenges, Speaker Stefanovic stressed that the National Assembly would commence the negotiation preparation processes as if Serbia were already at the very door to the European Union. Stressing that the Assembly Service, headed by Secretary General Jana Ljubicic and her Deputy Mladen Mladenovic, has taken the initiative in the cooperation projects focusing on the process of negotiations with the European Union. As some of the priorities, Stefanovic listed training the MPs, the committees taking a more active role, as well as training the Assembly Service for the upcoming negotiation process in a manner and using mechanisms which will not take up too much time and boost the harmonisation thus reducing the timeframe for the completion of the talks and reaching the final goal – full-fledged European Union membership.
Stefanovic also talked about the Parliament’s transparency adding that it would gain additional importance in the upcoming period as the citizens need to be informed about the real reasons for the adoption of European Union standards, and adding that strengthening the institutional capacities and supervisory role need to remain in focus as the Parliament will play a special role in the negotiation process viz. in the control and supervision of the implementation of laws. The National Assembly Speaker noted that the media representation of the Parliament’s activities should be further developed as the citizens are often not aware of what the MPs’ duties outside of the plenary hall are.
In conclusion, Speaker Stefanovic again shared his pleasure with the support GIZ offered to the MPs’ participation in the Danube Cooperation Conference.
The Director of the European Integration Office, Milan Pajevic, said he was pleased with the support and understanding for the Office’s projects, as well as those realised in cooperation with GIZ. Pajevic stressed that Slovenia and Croatia’s accession talks models will be analysed with the help of experts and the direct participants in the two countries’ negotiation processes and that Serbia would soon decide which modalities suit it best.
GIZ project leader Andrej Horvat said that the project will be active until 2015, with the possibility for extension until 2018, but expecting that there would be no extension which would mean a quicker harmonisation of Serbian legislation within the European integration efforts.
Andrej Engleman, another GIZ representative directly involved in the creation of the Slovenian EU negotiations model and author of the amendments to the Slovenian Assembly’s Rules of Procedure which resolved the negotiations process and legislative harmonisation issues at the Slovenian Parliament, deemed that the process of coordination and formation of negotiating teams should be completed by mid-summer. According to him what is most important for the current stage is to work on establishing all the relevant structures for the beginning of the talks and informing both the expert and general public on the process and its impact. He expects that, having been granted the start date, the actual process should start in October by first establishing the situation, while the talks themselves should start at the beginning of next year, and concluded that Serbia should already be ready to operatively start the negotiations process.