Serbia is ready to open Chapter 32 talks

Serbia is ready to open Chapter 32 talks

’’Serbia is ready, and whenever the EU member states decide to open the Intergovernmental Conference, they can do so’’, Miscevic told Tanjug.

Some Belgrade media outlets said that the Conference would take place on October 19, and Miscevic said that with the start of October, Serbia was ready to open talks on the Financial Control Chapter.

Miscevic said everybody knew how much the opening of the Chapter 32 was conditional on implementing all agreements from the dialogue on normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

’’We are keeping the pace of successful agreements in the talks over the past few weeks solid and we hope that it will help make things go our way when it comes to opening the first chapter’’, she said.

Commenting on EU's neighborhood and enlargement negotiations Commissioner-designate Johannes Hahn’s stating that Serbia needs to carefully consider its refusal to support EU sanctions against Russia if Belgrade hopes to join the European Union, Miscevic said that the statement was made during a hearing before the European Parliament where the new commissioner had presented the policy he would be in charge of pursuing during his term in office.

“There is nothing else I can tell you at this moment. We will see how things will develop. We understand quite well that by the time we become an EU member, we must strive to align with the positions taken by the EU in this segment of its foreign affairs,” Miscevic said.

She said a bilateral screening meeting for Chapter 31 (Foreign, Security and Defense policy), would take place the following week.

Hahn comes from Austria, which strongly supports expansion of the EU to the Western Balkans, but he does not represent the official position taken by the government in Vienna, but rather a view taken by the entire EU, she said, adding that all member states had a positive attitude towards one of the most successful EU policies.

’’It is time they showed the positive attitude in the case of the remaining candidate countries, primarily those from the Western Balkans, including Serbia’’, she added.

’’I have no reason to doubt that the support will be there’’, Miscevic said.