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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Final answers to Questionnaire next week

Belgrade, 21 January 2011

Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Bozidar Djelic presented today at the session of the Serbian parliament’s Committee for European Integration the draft version of answers to the Questionnaire of the European Commission.

Author: Beta

Djelic underlined that Serbia’s answers to the Questionnaire are "an X-ray of our state", and announced that the Serbian government will establish the final answers that will be submitted to the commission on 31 January.

After the answers are presented to the Council for European Integration, suggestions of the parliament and other institutions will be considered, then the committees will examine them, after which the government will accept the official version of the responses to the Questionnaire, said the Deputy Prime Minister.

Technical missions of the European Commission are then expected to come to check the credibility of the responses and the implementation of the Action Plan envisaging activities to meet the recommendations of the European Commission for prompt fulfilment of the requirements for acquiring the status of candidate for EU membership.

Answers to 33 chapters of the Questionnaire will be presented in 17 volumes on between 6,000 and 7,000 pages, explained Djelic.

In only six weeks Serbia managed to complete a big job on which other countries worked for several months, he underscored noting that the entire administration, experts and citizens were engaged in this process.

The Deputy Prime Minister noted that Serbia is the only country in which such a debate has been organised because the government wants dialogue and as broad a consensus as possible regarding Serbia’s EU integration process.

A dynamic first half of the year dedicated to European integrations is ahead of Serbia, the Deputy Prime Minister said.

Director of the Serbian government’s Office for EU Integration Milica Delevic explained that Serbia's responses to questions from the Questionnaire are a true and comprehensive overview of the situation in Serbia.

She said that expert missions will come to Serbia in late February to deliver additional questions for which the Serbian state organs are currently preparing.

These questions will refer to reform of the judiciary and the recommendations Serbia received in this context.

We are adopting recommendations from the Action plan so that the actual situation would change and Serbia could become an EU candidate country this year, Delevic said.

The first challenge was to draft the working version of the replies in such a short notice, while the second will be to engage a large number of people in the preparation of answers, she said, announcing that the answers will be made public on the government web page, just as it was the case with the Questionnaire.

The European Commission’s Questionnaire, which contains 2483 questions divided into six annexes and 33 chapters, was delivered by European Enlargement Stefan Fule to representatives of the Serbian government on 24 November 2010 in Belgrade.

The Serbian Parliament’s EU Integration Committee adopted by majority vote the conclusion endorsing government efforts to prepare answers to the Questionnaire as soon as possible and deliver them to the European Commission.