European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn delivered a speech at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade to students of the Faculties of Law, Economy, Security, Political Sciences and the Forum for Diplomacy and International Relations.
Together with the Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Ambassador Michael Davenport and the Head of Serbia’s EU accession negotiating team Tanja Miscevic, Commissioner Hahn answered students’ questions concerning the opening of new negotiating chapters, judiciary reform and EU enlargement policy.
In his opening remarks available in full here, Commissioner Hahn stressed the importance the EU attached to education, adding that support for education is an essential part of Union’s enlargement agenda.
The evidence to support his claim is the donation of 50 scholarly publications to the Faculty of Law in Belgrade within the project EUTEKA.
Hahn said those books were part of the wider support of EUR30 million the EU had provided to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development to upgrade the infrastructure of nearly 30 faculties across Serbia. To put it in an even wider context, those are part of the EUR2 billion of support that the EU has provided to Serbia since 2007.
“Next year, we also plan to invest EUR27 million in the Serbian education sector,“ Hahn said.
He reminded that in 2015 nearly 2,000 Serbian students and teachers were able to visit or study in the EU under the Erasmus programme and that “Serbian academics and researchers are also well represented under the Horizon 2020 programme, which is strictly focused on supporting European research excellence.“
Commissioner Hahn said he was confident that Member States would very soon agree unanimously to make progress on chapters 25, dealing with science and research and 26, dealing with education and culture.
Hahn with students at the Botanical Garden reconstructed thanks to EU support
FoNet
Before meeting with the students at the Faculty of Law, Commissioner Hahn had paid a visit to the Botanical Garden whose reconstruction was bankrolled by the EU with EUR1.4 million.
He was hosted by the Director Milan Veljic, Dean of the Faculty of Biology Zeljko Tomanovic and students of the Faculty to which the Botanical Garden Jevremovac belongs.
Hahn visited the Green Pavilion of the Botanical Garden in Takovska Street where the arboretum and greenhouse were reconstructed back in October 2014.
The reconstruction project ran from 2012-2014 and was a part of the EUR30 million-worth programme of assistance to higher education institutions in Serbia.
