At the opening of 44th General Assembly of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (SCTM), Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Oskar Benedikt said that 70 percent of European standards were enforced at the local level, adding that standards are expected to be enforced in the areas of environmental protection, waste management, municipal services, public administration reform and investment promotion.
He said that the European Union remained Serbia’s best path of building a sound economy, adding that the EU was Serbia’s key partner, accounting for more that 65 percent of its total exports and 62 percent of the overall imports.
Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Ana Brnabic announced two major steps regarding the public administration reform: finishing the financing system reform and developing the decentralisation strategy.
“In doing so, we rely on the SCTM. Thanks to their suggestions we have reached the middle ground on amendments to the Law on Financing Local Self-government which are least painful to both town and municipalities and the Government, Brnabic said.
“As the Government we can enforce all sorts of things and be rather efficient in reform implementation, but the Government is effective only to the extent to which the local self-governments are effective in responding to citizens needs,” she added.
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According to her, the decentralisation strategy should help everyone to cut expenses and coordinate competences and resources assigned to local self-governments.
Belgrade Mayor Sinisa Mali said that Belgrade accounted for 40 percent of Serbia’s GDP and was the locomotive of the country’s development.
“At the moment, there is a record number of construction sites in Belgrade – nearly 500 – which employ the local labour and drive Serbian economy forward,” Mali said.
He said that citizens tasked the City with resolving two key issues – putting the City at the service of its citizens and creating new jobs.
The President of the CoE Congress of Local and Regional Authorities Gudrun Mosler-Törnström said the body she was the Congress represented 200,000 local authorities across Europe.
As she put it, the Congress monitors the implementation of local and regional democracy across the Member States, adding that the CoE observer mission was coming to Serbia in February 2017.
According to her, tangible progress was made in the period since the mission’s last visit, adding that Serbia appeared to be on the right track to improve local self-government.
SCTM President, the Mayor of Nis Darko Bulatovic, said that the SCTM would continue to be a partner with the Government acting in the best interest of towns and municipalities and added that the two most important things for Serbia in 2017 are the adoption of decentralisation strategy and coordination of competences, funds and capacity.
