The state-of-play of the talks and the Report on the Republic of Serbia-EU accession negotiations during the Finnish Presidency-in-Office (July – December 2019) were presented by Minister of European Integration Jadranka Joksimovic who stressed that one of the most important goals in the coming period would be to step-up the cooperation with the National Assembly, although this cooperation was good during the previous legislatures. She added that this year was unique in many ways, the EU accession process included. There have been delays in the accession process, as well as objective obstacles, Joksimovic pointed out. With all the challenges we and the EU itself were faced with, we managed to make progress in almost all or most of the negotiating chapters, managed to open 18 of the 35 chapters since 2015 to date, which is not a bad result, the Minister concluded. She added that, although we have not opened any chapters this year, we still maintained a leading position among the countries in the accession process and today we are ready to open five new chapters. Also, in the last two or three years, we have maintained a strong pro-European feeling among the citizens and accepted a completely new EU accession methodology, said Joksimovic.

Following a debate, the Committee members unanimously accepted the Report on the Republic of Serbia-EU accession negotiations during the Finnish Presidency-in-Office (July – December 2019) and proceeded to select Committee Chairperson Elvira Kovacs, Committee Deputy Chairperson Dusica Stojkovic and Committee member Enis Imamovic to take part in the virtual meeting of the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC), 30 November – 1 December 2020.

The sitting was chaired by Committee Chairperson Elvira Kovacs, and attended by the following Committee members and deputy members: Dusica Stojkovic, Vesna Markovic, Dubravka Filipovski, Vuk Mircetic, Ana Miljanic, Vesna Rankovic, Predrag Rajic, Nemanja Joksimovic, Viktor Jevtovic, Ana Pesic, Ljiljana Malusic, Stanislava Janosevic, Djordje Milicevic, Zagorka Aleksic and Dr Muamer Bacevac.