Franc Bogovic, member of the European Parliament (EP) and Vice President of the 'Friends of Serbia' EP group, expressed on Monday the hope that current candidates for membership in the European Union - Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo - would all be accepted to the European family by the end of 2020.
Serbia is firmly on the path towards full membership in the EU, but wants to enter Europe as an integral whole - either that or nothing, says Tomislav Nikolic.
The Serbian president made this statement as he addressed the central ceremony marking Armed Forces Day and Victory Day in Zrenjanin, northern Serbia, on Monday.
President Tomislav Nikolic has said he will give a mandate to form a new government to SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic.
Speaking on Sunday, he added that if the Serbian Constitution is changed in the future, he knows there will be no change to the preamble that states Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia.
"I think I will not even have to hold consultations on a PM-designate as everything depends on whether someone has managed to secure 126 MPs who will vote for a government," he said, according to Tanjug.
European soccer’s governing body voted Tuesday to formally recognize the Kosovo Football Federation as its 55th member in a vote at its annual congress in Budapest. Serbia, which does not recognize Kosovo, reacted angrily to the decision and said it would work to overturn it.
Opinion piece writer for the paper, Halil Matoshi, says that the British legal official of the UEFA, Alasdair Bell, surprised on Tuesday experts of the international right with his brilliant defense of Kosovo’s right to become member of the UEFA which is preceded by FIFA membership. “After the International Court of Justice’s rejection of Serbia’s question on whether the Governing Provisional Institutions of Kosovo had the right to proclaim independence of Kosovo, this was the most brilliant defense of Kosovo in the international arena,” writes Matoshi.
Position of the German government when it comes to relations between Belgrade and Pristina is based on the negotiation framework, which does not require recognition of Kosovo’s independence, reads the answer of the German Government lead by Angela Merkel on 31 questions on Serbia, forwarded to it by a group of the MPs of German Left Party, to which Deutsche Welle had an insight.
Situation of Serbian media in Kosovo is worsening every next year, along with the economic uncertainty, various pressures, attacks on journalists and overspread censorship and auto-censorship, says chairperson of the Association of Serbian Journalists in Kosovo, Budimir Ničić.
The front-page editorial of the paper notes that arrests of Kosovo Albanians based on arrest warrants issued by Serbian authorities, remain a challenge in the relations between the two countries. “Even Kosovo senior officials and well-known politicians became victims of these decisions; however, due to the sensitivity of the cases, they were released after the mediation of the internationals. However, when ordinary citizens, who do not carry senior positions, are concerned, their suffering is limitless.
Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) has called all media to join their action of ‘five minutes of a super loud silence’ today, on the occasion of the International Day of Free Media.
The US Balkans expert Daniel Serwer said in an interview for Radio Free Europe that Serbia will not be able to gain European Union membership without resolving all major issues, including recognition of Kosovo and exchange of ambassadors. “If it doesn’t do this, I don’t see how Serbia could become an EU member,” he said. Speaking about recent Serbian elections, Serwer said the current Prime Minister of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic won major support because of his pro-European politics.