"No one can stop Serbia"

"No one can stop Serbia"

According to her, Serbia cannot be stopped on that road when it comes to the procedure just because it did not join the sanctions against Russia, but that it will slow it down.

"I expect that some member states will raise the issue of Serbia's non-compliance with the sanctions regime as one of the main conditions that may motivate them not to support us to open the next cluster 3 that we are ready for," Joksimovic told RTS.

She also pointed out that it is difficult to talk about sanctions against the citizens of Serbia who have felt what sanctions mean. "For us, the issue of sanctions against the Russian Federation is not easy. If we want to be a member of the EU, the issue of sanctions will certainly be asked of us in the future," she said.

Answering the question whether she thinks that sanctions should be imposed on Russia, Joksimović said that she does not know whether they would gain or lose something at this moment.

"We must show that we condemn both the war and the violation of territorial integrity, no matter who is at stake, even when they are your friends. I absolutely believe that we should have voted for all these resolutions we voted for," she said.

Joksimovic pointed out that the new political credo in the EU is alignment with the common foreign and security policy.

"If once the priority was economic integration, the rule of law, now it is becoming a common foreign and security policy," she said. She added that the procedures are clear and that according to them, no one can stop Serbia on the road to the EU.

"No one can stop us on the road, in terms of procedure, just because we did not join the sanctions regime, but it will of course slow us down. That is not a dilemma at all," she said. She added that Serbia is ready to continue EU integration, and that Serbia clearly condemned the war, and stated that we are not a politically neutral country.

"Let politicians and citizens understand that when you are an associated country in the process of EU integration, you are not a politically neutral country. Military neutral yes, but politically no. We proved that by voting for all relevant resolutions in UN bodies," she said.

She expressed confidence that some EU member states will raise the issue of non-harmonization of Serbia with the sanctions regime against the Russian Federation. She stated that this could be the reason why we do not get support for the opening of Cluster 3, which is competitiveness and inclusive growth, and for which Serbia is ready.

She assessed that everything that has been done in Serbia in the last 8-10 years has been done mostly thanks to the fact that it is on a clear European path, and that it has made the European story serious.

"We have shown that we are sustainable, thanks to the European road. Don't let anyone have a dilemma, so that we could achieve all this if we were not on the way to joining EU," she pointed out.

Commenting on the results of the public opinion poll that the support for joining the EU has decreased, she assessed that the results can often be related to current emotions.

"I can say that in the last eight years, every public opinion poll has been correlated with the current situation," she said, adding that Euro-enthusiasm had dropped dramatically when there were challenges around Kosovo and Metohija and now because of the feeling that someone is pressuring us to impose sanctions to the Russian Federation".

She added that no poll could convince her that citizens would vote against joining the EU in a referendum. She said that the support of the EU is less in the EU countries themselves than in Serbia. "But no one raised the issue of leaving the EU, on the contrary, they agree on how to jointly go into gas and oil procurement, how to diversify to be as independent as possible, in the interest of citizens and their future," she said.

On the occasion of marking May 9, Europe Day and Victory Day, she said that those days are inextricably linked. "Serbia is part of Europe's turbulent and difficult history and everything that generations have felt. Those two days are closely connected. European peace has been uninterrupted for a long time. But it was the 90's and we know very well what it means not to be part of the EU, in the club who decides on something”, she said.

She described the current war in Ukraine as a great and unprecedented crisis on the soil of the European continent. "When we talk about Europe, we should not just talk about the EU, this is not just EU day - this is Europe Day". "We belong to the European continent, and our aspirations are as an associated EU country that is in the process of accession, and we have our rights and our obligations there. We are very interested in the future of the European continent, and today we are celebrating Europe Day", she said.

Responding to the thesis about the collapse of the EU, she said that she did not see the interest of the member states in destroying the long-built project. "No one, except the United Kingdom, which is a special case, decided to leave, even though the percentage of trust in the EU was low, even in the member states," she said. She added that now the relations in the EU are strengthening, empowering, uniting and looking for common answers. "That's the way big projects have to work to survive," she said.