Accession of Serbia to the European Union

BELGRADE - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Wednesday thanked European Parliament President Antonio Tajani for his respect for Serbia and the Serbs and for getting to know Serbia and the Balkans very well.

DAVOS - Meeting with EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn in Davos on Thursday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic expressed the hope the EU's enlargement strategy would make the positive, encouraging messages from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker more concrete and have a major impact on regional peace and stability.

BELGRADE - If a referendum on Serbia's EU membership were to be held tomorrow, 52 pct of Serbian citizens would vote for, 24 pct would vote against, while 12 pct would not vote at all, or would not know how to answer the question of "Do you support Serbia becoming an EU member state?", shows the latest survey by the Serbian Ministry of European Integration.

That's according to a working version of EU enlargement strategy that the Belgrade daily Vecenje Novosti said it has seen.

According to the the article, which noted that the document should officially be presented in February, an agreement between Belgrade and Pristina is of essential importance for the European perspective of both Kosovo and Serbia and the wider region.

BELGRADE - Serbia is working intensively on fulfilling the European agenda to open more chapters in its EU accession process, President Aleksandar Vucic said at a meeting with EU Delegation head Sem Fabrizi on Wednesday.

They agreed Serbia needed to work on negotiation chapters 23 and 24 more energetically, the presidential press office said.

This is true above all when it comes to the protection of its territorial integrity and sovereignty, he added.

At the same time, Serbia continued activities aimed at achieving its key foreign policy priority and that is full EU integration, he told diplomats and editors of media outlets gathered at the Ministry of Foreign Affair's New Year reception.

BELGRADE - Serbia can open at least four new chapters in its EU accession talks in the first half of 2018, says Serbia's chief EU negotiator Tanja Miscevic, announcing that a chapter on statistics would soon be sent to Brussels.

BRUSSELS - The European Commission (EC) believes that Serbia, which has opened 12 and provisionally closed two chapters in its EU accession talks, is making good progress on the European path, and wants the country to keep this momentum going in 2018, Tanjug was told at the EC headquarters in Brussels.

Former Deputy PM Suzana Grubjesic is back in the public life with her appointment as the general secretary of the European Movement in Serbia.

Grubjesic told the daily Danas that if the current pace continued, it would take Serbia six years to open all chapters in EU accession negotiations and 12 years to close them - as only 12 chapters have been opened in four years, with two temporarily closed.