Gojkovic expects opening of first chapters in EU talks

ROME - Serbian Parliament Speaker Maja Gojkovic, who is attending the EU Speakers Conference in Rome, said that she expects the first chapters in the EU accession talks to be opened this year, the parliament speaker's office said in a release on Tuesday.

By opening chapters in the accession talks, the EU would send a positive signal to Serbia indicating that it recognizes the progress that the country has made, Gojkovic told her European counterparts on the sidelines of the two-day conference in Rome.

During the conference, Gojkovic met with Jesus Posada, President of Congress of Deputies of Spain, and discussed inter-parliamentary cooperation and European integration with the parliament speakers of Hungary, Poland, Cyprus, Malta, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia, and with President of the Republic of Italy Sergio Mattarella.

The two-day conference, organized by the Italian Parliament, brought together 25 parliament speakers from the EU member states and candidate countries. The delegates adopted a declaration on stepping up rescue operations in the Mediterranean, urging the governments to take concrete and effective measures and provide mechanisms to ensure that similar tragedies do not happen in the future.

Photo TANJUG/T. Valic, file