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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia initials CEFTA agreement

Brussels, 15 December 2006

State Secretary at the Serbian Ministry of International Economic Relations Vlatko Sekulovic initialed today in Brussels the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), which will be signed by Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on December 19 at the CEFTA summit in Bucharest.

Sekulovic, who is also head of the Serbian negotiating team in the negotiations on this agreement told Tanjug news agency that after several months of strenuous negotiations, he initialed the CEFTA agreement in line with a decision of the Serbian government. He explained that this is the most important event for the region since 2000 in the field of trade.

He pointed out that with this agreement Serbia is getting closer to the EU, explaining that under CEFTA, countries in the region will do in practice what is awaiting them when they become EU members.

According to Sekulovic, in autumn 2007 CEFTA should replace the existing complicated system of 31 bilateral free trade agreements in southeastern Europe, thus making the trade and investment easier.

Sekulovic said that Serbia is the nineth country or territory that initialed the agreement, after Macedonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Romania, Albania, Moldova and UNMIK on behalf of Kosovo-Metohija did that on November 9.

The State Secretary said that Bosnia-Herzegovina has still not made a decision whether to sign the agreement because it has not agreed with Serbia and Croatia on concessions for certain products, such as milk and meat.

Sekulovic said that Belgrade at first had reservations concerning the signing of the agreement because it had not reached an agreement with Croatia on tobacco excises, but finally it was decided that the agreement should be signed and that the issue of excises be resolved until the agreement's ratification in mid 2007 or later if necessary. However, that issue will not influence the overall implementation of the agreement.