The National Assembly standing delegation is participating in the Third Part of the Plenary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, held in Strasbourg this week. The delegation is headed by Biljana Pantic Pilja, and comprises delegation members Elvira Kovacs, Dunja Simonovic Bratic, Tatjana Pasic, Ana Jakovljevic and Vladimir Djordjevic.
The main event was the election of new Secretary General of the Council of Europe. In the second round, the MPs elected the Swiss candidate Alain Berset by 114 votes. Estonian candidate Indrek Saar came in second place with 85 votes, while Belgian candidate Didier Reynders had 46 votes.
There was also an election for a judge from our country to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for the next nine years. Mateja Djurovic was elected to that position.
The situation in Ukraine dominated the session and the MPs discussed the position of young people, improvement of procedures for asylum seekers, obligations based on Armenia's membership, and marked the 75th anniversary of the organisation's founding. The members of our delegation also participated in the session of the Subcommittee for the Western Balkans, the topic of which was the implementation of the Prespa Agreement. It was also agreed that the next meeting of the Subcommittee for the Western Balkans will be held in Belgrade.
The Hungarian delegation organised a reception in honour of the Serbian delegation on the premises of the Hungarian Mission in Strasbourg, and on that occasion the two delegations confirmed their mutual friendship and the high level of relations between the two countries.