The delegation was headed by Sergei Stanishev, President of the Party of European Socialists and Hannes Swoboda, President of the Political Group of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. The officials discussed European integration, reforms in Serbia and the Kosovo issue.

The European parliamentarians said that they had come to visit to convey a clear message to both Serbia and the European public that they wanted Serbia to join Europe as soon as possible. They supported the efforts to speed up its candidacy for EU membership, saying that Serbia deserved candidate status seeing how in the past few years it had put considerable efforts into implementing reforms. This is the attitude of the majority of Members of the European Parliament who believe that it would spur further social reform, stressed Hannes Swoboda, President of the Political Group of Socialists and Democrats in the EP.

Sergei Stanishev, President of the Party of European Socialists, said that they wished to see EU enlargement continue and that the Western Balkan countries should become Union members since that was the only way to ensure peace, stability and prosperity in the region. Stanishev deemed that in the past two years the Democratic Party has greatly contributed to bringing Serbia closer to the EU and only it could realise Serbia’s European perspective.

Dragoljub Micunovic highlighted the tremendous importance of Serbia receiving European Union candidate status, expressing his optimism that good news would soon follow and the decision of the European Council would be a positive one. He thanked the Members of the European Parliament for their support.