On 18 March, at the National Assembly House, the members of the Montenegrin Parliamentary Friendship Group with Serbia met with the National Assembly’s Parliamentary Friendship Group with Montenegro.

The Montenegrin guests were welcomed by Dragoslav Bozovic, head of the National Assembly’s Serbia-Montenegro friendship group. Saying that this was the first meeting of the two parliaments’ friendship groups, he expressed hope that they would meet more often in future and contribute to further strengthen the two countries’ overall relations.

Rifat Rastoder, Montenegrin Deputy Parliament Speaker and head of the friendship group with Serbia also urged to intensify this type of parliamentary cooperation. He opined that future meetings should be dedicated to specific topics and resolving open issues as this would allow the parliamentarians to share experiences, open certain issues of interest to the citizens of both countries and contribute to their resolution.

The officials agreed that parliamentary diplomacy can further improve the cooperation between Serbia and Montenegro in their approach to the EU and that friendship groups can contribute to build even better relations between the two countries. They stressed that parliamentarians should, particularly through their legislative activity, help improve the relations between Serbia and Montenegro, as it is, as they said, unacceptable to have Serbia and Montenegro still use German banks for payment operations.

In addition to its head Rastoder, the Montenegrin parliamentary friendship group with Serbia was represented by Dr Zoran Srzentic, Zoran Gospic, Neven Gasovic, Emilo Labudovic and Dr Branko Radulovic.

The meeting was attended by the Serbian Parliament’s friendship group members Zeljko Tomic, Vuk Dincic, Radovan Radovanovic and Prof. Dr Dragoljub Micunovic, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman.