Representatives of the European Union and Serbia talked about the implementation of IPA programmes
Ksenija Milenkovic, Acting Director of Government Office for European Integration and Michael Davenport, Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia co-chaired the session of EU-Serbia joint monitoring committee for IPA.
Joint committee stressed the importance of national sectoral policies and strategies as the groundwork for the implementation of EU projects and programmes, linking them to budget planning and realisation.
Members also welcomed the progress made in preparing relevant strategic projects, especially through the establishment of the Single List of Priority Infrastructure Projects for major investment projects.
The session covered two main challenges: (a) ensuring sufficient institutional capacity for management of projects and programmes in the Republic of Serbia; (b) overcoming “bottle necks” in terms of infrastructure projects in the area of environment at the municipal level. Michael Davenport stressed the importance of taking decisive actions in order to overcome these challenges and ensure even better usage of EU funds in future.
Participants also talked about timely and efficient EU assistance to Serbia for flood relief and in view of migrant and refugee crisis.
IPA is the main EU financial instrument supporting Serbia’s EU accession. In the period 2014-2020, the EU allocated new funds amounting to EUR1.5 billion. EU is also the biggest donor in Serbia, as it donated more than EUR3 billion to support the development of mining, energy, science and research, justice reform, culture and transport in the past 15 years.
IPA monitoring committee meets twice a year in order to monitor the implementation of IPA assistance and IPA projects in Serbia.
