Conference “Serbia and the European Integration of the Western Balkans: Exchange of Views in the Run-Up to Paris Summit”

The Austro-French Center for Rapprochement in Europe and its partners, the European Movement Serbia, the European Fund for the Balkans, the ifri Paris in close cooperation with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, Austria and France are organising the international conference entitled "Serbia and the European integration of the Western Balkans: Exchange of Views in the Run-Up to Paris Summit”. After Berlin and Austria in 2014 and 2015 respectively, in mid-June 2016, France will assume the organisation of the next Western Balkan Summit. The purpose of this event, which is part of the Berlin-Vienna-Paris-Rome-London Process, will be to maintain the European impetus in the region and ensure the respect of the commitments taken on at the past summits. Eventually the challenge will be to sustain the political and economic transition, which starts to falter in most of the countries in the region, and to support them in their European trajectory. The relations of Serbia with the European Union as well as with its South-Eastern European neighbors play a very important role, especially in regard of the regional dynamics of the European integration. After a decade of frictions and upheavals, the relations between Serbia and the European Union have constantly improved in recent years. Their rapprochement, marked by the opening of accession negotiations in 2014, has accelerated. Its relations with Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Croatia are also perceived as a determinant for the regional security. That is why Serbia is increasingly regarded as a pivotal country in the region in regard of the European integration matters. The aim of this conference is to assess the position of Serbia in its regional space in the light of European integration and to identify the expectations, which can reasonably be addressed to and by its government in the regional cooperation and European integration matters, a few month before the Paris Summit on the Western Balkans. Hedvig Morvai, the Executive Director of the European Fund for the Balkans, will be one of the speakers in the panel “Serbia in Its Regional Space – A Challenge with European Implications”, which is part of the agenda which further focuses on the panel discussions “The European Integration of Serbia – Driving Forces and Pitfalls” and “Geopolitics and European Integration in the Western Balkans”. The conference will be held on Friday, March 18^th, 2016, at the Radisson Blu Old Mill. It will be in French, German, English and the language of the host country with simultaneous translation. Check the Conference Agenda