Remarks at the opening of Belgrade Book Fair by HE Ambassador Michael Davenport, Head of EU delegation to Serbia
Belgrade, 20 October 2013

Dear Minister Jovanović,

Dear Minister Ružić,

Dear Mrs Miščević

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to be here, among so many book-lovers, and to open the EU stand at the 58th Belgrade Book Fair, the most important fair of this kind in the entire region.

I like the slogan of this year’s event very much – ”The area of ​​freedom”, which stresses that literature is a kind of an area of ​​freedom and imagination – for all of us.

Our participation is a great opportunity to reach out and share the story of the EU in Serbia – and this story is increasingly shared by Serbia as a candidate country. The book fair opens up to us a magnificent showcase of European cultural diversity of which Serbia is an integral part.

A linguist by education, I want every citizen to be able to feel and enjoy the power of language and the spell of book.

I am very proud that Minister Jovanović and I can announce to you the 5th Serbian edition of the EUROPA DIARY which will soon reach schools across the country. I would like to thank the Ministry for their valuable support in this project, as well as the Serbian European Integration Office.    

As every year, we are glad to present offerings of the EU Publication Office (which closely cooperates with the Member States). Visitors of the Fair will be able to order on our stand, via EU Bookshop website a free publication that will be delivered to them within a week.

We will also promote many digital offerings. This is the direction that the book market is obviously taking. Through Europeana, Europe’s online cultural gateway, you can already access over 26 million exhibits, including books, from over 2,000 institutions like libraries and archives.

A month ago at the Göteborg Book Fair in Sweden, the laureates of the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature were announced. Out of twelve winners, two come from the former Yugoslavia: Faruk Šehić from Sarajevo and Lidija Dimkovska from Skopje. Two years ago Jelena Lengold from Belgrade was among the laureates.  

This prize gives a boost to local writers to reach wide European readership of over half a billion people. The award also links the region with book publishing market in the European Union, which accounts for a significant part of the overall cultural sector, which comprises about 4.5 percent of the GDP in the EU, and provides more than eight million jobs.

It is of no small importance that 16 Serbian book publishers participated in our “Culture 2007-2013” program. In January, the Commission will launch the new Creative Europe programme to strengthen the competitiveness and to promote cultural diversity.

The programme will provide funding for the translation of more than 4,500 books; it will also enable 300,000 artists, cultural professionals and their works to gain international experience.

I hope that Serbia will be able to join it through signing the new Memorandum of Understanding with the European Commission and harmonizing media laws in the area of digitization.

Poland is a special focus at this year’s Belgrade Book Fair, as a country guest of honour. I am delighted that the Ambassador of Poland and the fair’s special guest Madame Olga Tokarchuk, a renowned author from Poland, are opening this stand with me. Witamy bardzo serdecznie. I am honoured that Minister Branko Ružić and Chief Negotiator Tanja Miščević have also joined us tonight.

Thank you all for coming this evening.

I declare our stand open.

To mark this special occasion, I would like to invite our dear guests to make first symbolic entries into a manuscript “EU accession: New chapter in the book of Serbia’s history”.