Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said on Wednesday that the beginning of explanatory screening, which European Union experts officially began with a Serbian delegation in Brussels today, marked the technical beginning of membership negotiations and that this was a big day for Serbia.
"In the practical sense, this is a big day for us because this is the first technical meeting in our EU membership negotiations," he told reporters in Belgrade.
Today and tomorrow, the European Commission will present the acquis, EU laws and regulations pertaining to the judiciary and fundamental rights to Serbian Justice Minister Nikola Selakovic and negotiating team chief Tanja Miscevic. This is the first step towards the start of membership negotiations announced for January.
This is not a political but a technical process involving talks between legal experts that will take months to see the extent to which Serbia's legal and economic system is aligned with European standards.
Selakovic told EC experts that today had multifold meaning to Serbia's citizens and that Serbia had been waiting for it a long time, Serbian electronic media said.
He said the Justice Ministry and the state administration were determined to carry out the reforms under way so that European integration could be as effective as possible. "I hope that this time next year the Serbian judiciary will be considerably closer to the European principles that we strive for and that Serbia will be, as it has always been, a guarantor of human rights and freedoms."
The screening began with Chapter 23, "Judiciary and Fundamental Rights," and will be followed by Chapter 24, "Justice, Freedom and Security."
