Hungary cedes 2025 CEI chairmanship to Serbian parliament

BELGRADE - After a meeting with Hungarian counterpart Laszlo Kover, Serbian Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic said Hungary had ceded the 2025 Central European Initiative (CEI) chairmanship to the Serbian parliament.

At a joint press conference, Brnabic thanked Kover and said the move was very important for Serbia and its positioning.

She said Hungary was one of Serbia's most significant partners and, when it comes to external trade, its number four partner overall and its third-largest in the EU behind Germany and Italy.

She thanked Kover and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban for using all meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg to say the best about Serbia and call on the EU to take the country in as a full-fledged member.

She noted that bilateral parliamentary cooperation was extremely important as part of the activities of a strategic cooperation council set up in June 2023.

"I found it important that we hold discussions during Hungary's EU presidency," Brnabic said, adding that it had been important to hear what more needed to be done to open Cluster 3 in Serbia's EU accession talks.

Kover said that, in the past ten years, Hungary and Serbia had gone from national reconciliation to a strategic partnership and friendship.

"That applies not only to the European enlargement process but to economic cooperation as well," he said, noting that the cooperation between the two countries could set an example for whole Europe.

He said his country would do everything in its power to spur the EU enlargement process on.

He said Hungary believed candidate countries should not be viewed as a group and that Serbia's EU membership should not be tied to Ukraine's.

Every candidate country should be evaluated based on its performance, he added.

"Opening Cluster 3 - if not this year, then early next year - would be a big step forward towards progress on European integration," Kover said.