Jadranka Joksimovic: Expectations exist and are going in direction of showing greater commitment

Photo: Tanjug/Zoran Zestic

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Minister for EU Integration Jadranka Joksimovic said today, ahead of a vote of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee on a resolution calling on Serbia to comply with sanctions against Russia and conclude the Belgrade-Pristina agreement with mutual recognition, that these are known positions.

"These are the views of some countries that have not been presented for the first time, but it's about the concept of the European Union. There is status neutrality in the EU because there are five countries that do not recognize so-called Kosovo as independent and therefore the documents and our negotiating framework are status neutral and there is no demand for mutual recognition. That would mean inserting expectations in advance of how the dialogue process would end, while the documents and the negotiating framework clearly state a comprehensive agreement on the normalization of relations, which should lead to a series of previously fulfilled smaller agreements that Chancellor Scholz talked about in Belgrade," she said.

When asked how much room for maneuver there is when it comes to sanctions, the minister said that this is not about room for maneuver, and that Serbia showed full commitment in the beginning - we share the same values of respecting international peace and order and inviolability of territorial integrity.

"We have shown by voting for resolutions in the UN and many other high and important bodies of the multilateral world, and there is no doubt about that. Restrictive regime or autonomous measures and restrictive sanctions regime are challenging for us for several reasons and I think we have talked about it many times and our citizens fully understand it," she said.

"Will that affect the attitude towards us in the EU and the attitude towards the perception of our commitment to European values - yes, because there is now an almost unanimous thinking in the EU geared towards a complete isolation of the Russian Federation that will last a long time," added the minister.

She pointed out that expectations of course exist, and that they go in that direction of showing greater commitment and greater respect for the decisions made jointly by the EU.

(Telegraf.rs)