. European Council President Charles Michel’s recent bid to further strengthen integration and deepen Serbia-EU cooperation is clearly “about deepening cooperation within the existing accession talks with Serbia”, EU Integration Minister Jadranka Joksimović said on Monday.
Joksimović told EURACTIV Serbia and BETA that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and European Council President Charles Michel had clearly stressed Serbia’s and the EU’s resolution to strengthen integration further deepen Serbia-EU cooperation even before membership in recent talks.
“The message is unambiguous that there are no substitutes or holding patterns for membership. It’s about deepening cooperation within the existing accession talks with Serbia,” Joksimović said, commenting on Michel’s idea of a “European geopolitical community.”
EU leaders are aware of the strategic, political, and economic importance of the Western Balkans, especially Serbia, to the continent’s security and stepped up their efforts to build peace, democracy, and integration in this part of Europe, she added.
Some EU members have strong expectations when it comes to further alignment with the common EU foreign and security policy for all candidate countries. “It’s a new political credo that has become a part of political reality, even though alignment in that area hasn’t been defined as a condition in the negotiating framework for our country,” Joksimović said.
She also pointed out that each individual EU member’s assessment of how close Serbia has come to meeting those expectations was sure to be a criterion when deciding on the next steps in the negotiating process.
Earlier on 23 May, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that Belgrade had not imposed sanctions against Russia and that for 89 consecutive days, the authorities in Serbia had been firmly holding their position in the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.
Vučić went on to say that a declaration recently passed in Tirana, which Serbia supported, was “a regional initiative that has nothing to do with the sanctions.” The Serbian president added that Serbia’s policy hadn’t changed since the last session of the National Security Council.
“Nothing has changed. We have condemned the intrusion in the territory of a sovereign state like Ukraine, and as for sanctions against Russia, nothing has changed,” Vučić explained, repeating that Serbia has been exposed to strong pressures for its stance.
