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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Country’s economic recovery priority of government

Belgrade, 29 September 2012

Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic said in an interview to today’s edition of Vecernje Novosti daily that all resources of the government are aimed at stopping the decline of the economy because without that it is impossible to achieve any other goals, including European integration and the necessary internal reforms.

The Serbian government’s official website brings excerpts from the interview.

On the forthcoming report by the European Commission:

- We expect a relatively decent report from the European Commission. I hope that Brussels will take into account the fact that Serbia had elections, that time was spent on the campaign and formation of the government and that my office has worked for only two months. So, I expect the report to be fair and moderately positive, to take into account everything that happened in Serbia in the previous period and, of course, to leave space and give us the opportunity to do by the end of the year some things that we missed and make a breakthrough in various fields.

Conditions for obtaining a date for starting accession talks with the EU:

- The conditions that Serbia has to meet in order for negotiations to be opened are well known, and this list of requirements will not be expanded. I was assured of that by Brussels officials. The conditions are, above all, the implementation of the agreements reached so far, continuation of dialogue, addressing the issues of telecommunications and electricity. The statements from some EU officials should be seen just like that - as a personal opinion and not the official policy of the Union. Whether European heads of states and governments will give us in December the date for negotiations will depend on many things, including the economic situation in the EU. It is important that we have definitely entered the process that leads to obtaining the date, and whether it will be granted now or next year is not the essential question.

On implementation of the agreement on integrated management of administrative crossings towards Kosovo:

- I agree that the agreement on the administrative line is not ideal and in many segments does not benefit Serbia. A working group for implementation of the agreement will be set up and we will try to change some things so that the agreement could be at the same time implementable in practice, acceptable for Pristina, without jeopardising our positions around Kosovo. We want the agreements to be implemented, but have no intention to further strengthen Kosovo’s independence.

On policy “both Europe and Kosovo”:

- We want to continue on the European path, find a way out of Kosovo knot that will at the same time preserve our territorial integrity. Honestly I believe that it is possible to stay firm about not recognising Kosovo’s independence without that harming our entry into the EU.

On dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina:

- It all depends on what you want to achieve through dialogue. It is important that the essence of these negotiations is not forcing Serbia to recognise Kosovo. In this case, the dialogue is unacceptable to us. At this point, even the EU itself lacks a clear vision of what would be the format and method of the negotiations, or who should take part in them. We are prepared to resume negotiations, in any format and in any place. But we are not ready to just sit at the table so that we would just give legitimacy to something that someone else agreed.