Dr Branislav Blazic, Chairman of the National Assembly’s Environmental Protection Committee, Aleksandar Vesic, Assistant Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Protection, and Tatjana Djurkovic, representative of the OSCE Mission in Serbia, spoke at the conference aiming to bring together all the relevant factors in the sphere of environmental protection and encourage constructive dialogue.

Committee Chairman Dr Branislav Blazic said that environmental protection is both a truly complex and an important area for Serbia. He stressed that the Environmental Protection Committee, by organising a series of public hearings to thoroughly define problems in the area, aims to create the conditions conducive to the adoption of the appropriate legislation to systemically regulate the area and develop the state and society.

Assistant Minister Aleksandar Vesic said that environmental protection with all its specificities unites the representatives of the state authorities and the civil sector in a common goal. He stressed that the development of Serbia should be accompanied by progress in the area and concluded that the relevant authorities would work on establishing an adequate penal policy for all who do not abide by the rules.

Tatjana Djurkovic of the OSCE Mission in Serbia said that Serbia has so far achieved a high level of harmonisation with the EU legislation primarily through the transparency of information in the area, active operation of the institute of “Green Chair” and the work of five Aarhus Centres in Serbia. She added that the Aarhus Centres are a link between the state institutions and the civil sectors through which all three of the pillars of the Aarhus Convention are concretely applied. Finally, she said that continued cooperation would produce even better results in the sphere.

The keynote speeches were followed by three panel discussions on accessibility of information, participation in decision-making processes and legal protection, and the potential for an even better implementation of the Aarhus Convention, where the participants contributed to the defining of recommendations and conclusions for furthering environmental protection in the Republic of Serbia.