Joint Consultative Committee to assist Serbia on the road to the EU

Serbia recently asked for local leaders in the EU i to provide more systematic and specific advice and support to local administrations, leading Serbia and the European Committee of the Regions to create a forum for local leaders. The first meeting of the forum - a Joint Consultative Committee, which has an official advisory role to the Association Council created between the EU and Serbia - was held in Brussels on 7 December.

The Serbian delegation was led by Kori Udovicki, one of Serbia's two deputy prime ministers and Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government. She told the committee that Serbia needs "a modern, rational, professional, depoliticised, merit-based public administration", and that the Serbian government has "a clear vision of how to transform its public administration to prepare it for becoming a part of the EU administrative space".

Dimitrios Kalogeropoulous (Greece/EPP), the co-chairman of the committee, said that the format of the Joint Consultative Committee, with seven CoR members and seven Serbian local politicians, was designed "for us to be able to work efficiently together to contribute to the negotiation process, making sure that the concerns and the experiences of local and regional authorities are taken into consideration for the accession talks".

The Serbian co-chairman of the committee, Dejan Jovanovic, Mayor of Nis, said that "while accession negotiations are led at national level, the biggest effects are seen at the local and regional level. Local government in Serbia must have enough institutional, administrative, financial and technical capacities to apply EU standards successfully, so there is an urgent need for their reform and modernisation".