Jelena Milic, Executive Director of Serbia’s Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, takes a hard look at reform of the security/justice sector and finds it still lacking (in a speech in Dublin to the Institute of International and European Affairs):
Note her criticism of U.S. cooperation with the military starting around minute 23.
She also testified two days later at the Joint Committee on European Affairs:
if Serbia meets other E[uropean] C[ommission] expectations from last year’s progress report, which will be evaluated in Commission findings and its recommendations to be announced on 12 October, and if the situation in Kosovo does not deteriorate and dialogue with Prishtina resumes, and if the state demonstrates that it can provide for the protection of the constitutional rights of the participants in the Pride Parade, Serbia should be given candidacy status.
This will provide some support for genuine pro-EU forces within Serbia and preempt a drop in public support for the EU integration process in advance of the 2012 general election in Serbia. The date of the EU negotiations should then be announced and organized as quickly as is feasible, but be firmly and clearly conditioned. Continued Serbian progress towards EU membership, if predicated on the strengthening of institutions and regulatory bodies within Serbia would weaken the principal opponents of the pro-EU agenda.
I’m less keen than Jelena on doing things based on their presumed impact on Serbian politics, but hers is a voice that should be heard.
Is this a revival of the 1920s and 1930s America that tried to limit immigration,…
Hope lies wherever the restraining and suffocating writ of the Trump Administration does not extend.…
It will take more time for Americans to fathom the mistake they have made. But…
I received this plea today. The issues are not new but now the situation is…
Trump can't get anything out of Putin because the American President has already given too…
Putin has weathered sanctions so far. And Trump shows no signs of taking advantage of…