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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia must accept modern trade standards

Belgrade, 19 October 2005

Serbian Minister of International Economic Relations Milan Parivodic said today that Serbia must accept the standards and principles of modern international trade. He added that accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an aim as well as the means for Serbia to achieve the level of development and efficiency needed for it to become, along with Greece, a leading country of the Balkans.

Author: Fonet

Inaugurating a two-day conference on Serbia’s accession to the WTO, Parivodic said that the principles of the WTO are so-called ‘national treatment’ of foreign businessmen, predictability of rules and economic policies in line with the rules of free trade.

He appealed to the business community to join the process of Serbia’s accession to the WTO with unity and enthusiasm, recalling that the WTO, founded in 1949, is the largest multilateral project in international economic law.

Parivodic said that a lot of time has been lost and it is necessary to make up for it because the only Balkan countries that are not members of the WTO are Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He also said that it is encouraging that the memorandum of external trade presented by Serbia at the previous meeting of the working group for Serbia’s accession to the WTO has been received positively.

According to Parivodic, the process of reform in Serbia must be all encompassing, speedy and effective and it must be achieved with national agreement because without a free market there can be no political freedom.

Parivodic said that it is important to attract major multinational companies that will turn Serbia’s privatised enterprises into leaders of the region. He added that it is important to modernise judicial and administrative governance as well as state governance, while at the same time it is particularly important that the law on anti -monopolisation is fully implemented.

The two-day conference on Serbia’s accession to the WTO and facilitation of trade and transit has been organised by the Serbian Ministry of International Economic Relations in cooperation with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Agency for International Trade Information and Cooperation (AITIC).