Eurasia Press & News
Serbian FM Vuk Jeremić is visiting Slovenia and he will speak to his hosts about Serbia’s EU integration and the planned Belgrade-Priština dialogue on Kosovo. The Serbian FM said after the meeting with his Slovenian counterpart Samuel Žbogar that EU membership was Serbia’s strategic interest.
He also expressed satisfaction over the fact that the Slovenian parliament would today ratify the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between Serbia and the EU.
Jeremić will have meetings with Slovenian PM Borut Pahor and President Danilo Turk today.
The Slovenian Foreign Ministry has announced that a decision to unfreeze the SAA was made in 2010 and that Slovenia is therefore advocating that a decision to call the European Commission to prepare an opinion about Serbia’s EU membership is adopted as soon as possible.
According to Slovenian media, one of the topics of the talks could be reopening of negotiations on assuming of guarantees for old foreign exchange savings from the former Yugoslavia under the patronage of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) from Basel, after Croatia agreed to it last week.
Therefore Serbia remains the only successor that has not officially given consent for continuation of the negotiations. In fact, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina gave their consent in 2002 when the first round of negotiations ended without results.
The issue is very important to Slovenia because Croatia’s market has been closed for it for years since Nova Ljubljanska banka (former Ljubljanska banka) did not return savings deposits to its Croatian clients. Slovenia recently said that precisely this was one of the issues Croatia should solve on its path toward the EU.
