Speaking with the representatives of political and economic life of Versmold, MP Vesna Markovic said that the citizens do support European integration, Serbia’s number one political objective, evidenced in the fact that in the last elections they supported her electoral list.

“Despite the difficult reforms conducted by the Serbian Government in its previous mandate, pay and pension cuts, the citizens recognised the benefits the country’s economy will reap from it and gave their support to this course of action”, stressed Markovic.

Speaking about regional cooperation, Markovic stressed the importance of the Berlin Process which gathers all the regional leaders and where all open issues are dealt with through dialogue without burdening the candidate countries’ European process. She added that the European Integration Committee, which she is member of, enjoys successful cooperation with the relevant parliamentary committees of the countries in the region.

Markovic reminded that this year Serbia has opened two significant EU negotiation chapters - 23 and 24, which is very important for the country at this moment when Europe is faced with challenges ranging from the migrant crisis to Brexit fallout. She commended EU’s decision not to give up on its enlargement process despite these.

Speaking of the relations between Serbia and Germany, MP Markovic said they are on a high level especially economic cooperation evidenced by the fact that German companies in Serbia employ more than 30,000 workers and Germany is Serbia’s biggest bilateral donor, having donated 1.6 billion EUR of non-refundable aid and loans for various projects.

The representatives of Versmold were interested in the structure of projects funded by Germany, foreign investments into agriculture, the citizen’s support of European integration and how it reflected onto the balance of power in the National Assembly, the current relations between Serbia and Croatia, as well as Serbia’s attitude toward the migrant crisis.

The visit of the representatives of political and economic life of the German town of Versmold, which has been enjoying successful cooperation with the Municipality of Irig for five years now and has a Friendship Group with Vrdnik, was organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Belgrade.