At the very beginning of the meeting, Ragus welcomed the Irish guests to our capital, expressing her satisfaction that Serbia will have an Irish embassy next year, which, as she pointed out, is extremely important for deepening the cooperation between the two countries. She informed the delegation of the National Assembly's intent to establish a Friendship Group with Ireland in the current legislature as well, which should be made official at the next session of the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee. She apostrophised that, under the leadership of National Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic, the current legislature will put special focus on strengthening parliamentary diplomacy, adding that this is geopolitically and bilaterally very important to strengthen cooperation between the parliamentarians of Serbia and Ireland.

The Chair of the Irish Parliament’s Committee on European Affairs Colm Brophy, who headed the delegation, agreed with Ragus that the opening of the embassy will strengthen the ties between the two nations, but that parliamentary cooperation must not lag behind, both at the formal level and international forums, as well as at the informal levels. Brophy also conveyed the message of the Irish Parliament’s Committee on of the European Affairs that they are strongly in favour of EU enlargement, which should be an open and balanced process for all candidate countries. He added that the EU should return its focus to the enlargement process and move away from the point of stagnation on this issue, where it has been for several years. The Committee Deputy Chair Brendan Howlin spoke about the importance of joining the EU and the benefits that the EU had on Ireland, from economic growth to solving geopolitical issues. He noted that the strength of the European Union lies in its diversity, but that the basic principles of this community, such as democracy and human rights, must be respected.

The Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee Marina Ragus pointed out that Serbia is more than ready for the next step in the process of European integration, but that the process, which for Serbia has been going on for 21 years now, has also instilled Euroscepticism in the Serbian people. She used the opportunity to talk about the stagnation of dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina and underlined that 15% of Serbs left the Autonomous Province of Kosovo-Metohija in the previous year, which indicates of an ethnic cleansing that is happening in the very heart of Europe. The reasons for this are the arrests of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija with no legal basis, the abolition of dinar as means of payment transactions where the Serbian community in Kosovo-Metohija constitutes the majority, the prevention of Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia and seven archbishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church from entering the territory of Kosovo-Metohija in order to attend the solemn opening of the regular annual session of the Assembly in the Patriarchate of Pec, as well as many other instances of repressions carried out by the so-called Pristina government against the Serbian people. She pointed out that such moves indicate that Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija do not have human and civil rights and that the incident in Banjska was a consequence of the political self-will of Albin Kurti. At the interest of the Irish delegation, Ragus also spoke about the Resolution on Srebrenica, as well as about the Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo-Metohija, which have still not been established, 11 years after the signing of the Brussels Agreement.

The officials agreed that open issues should be discussed openly and that what political leadership means is working on challenges, but that Serbia should not give up on European integration.

The members of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee Dunja Simonovic Bratic and Vladimir Djordjevic also took part in the meeting.