BELGRADE – Serbia can open three or four chapters in its EU accession talks by the year’s end, European Integration Minister Jadranka Joksimović said Monday, noting the negotiating position on Chapter 9 (Financial Services) had been sent to the European Commission weeks ago.
The chapter on the agenda is not determined by the European Commission but by Serbia’s agenda, its institutions and the negotiating team working on preparing negotiation chapters, which go through a certain procedure before they are sent to Brussels, she told reporters.
“For several weeks, I had been announcing we would send a negotiating position for Chapter 9, and then you report the news from the European Commission’s working bodies in Brussels as an exclusive. That is a strange practice in our media,” she said.
A chapter cannot be opened without being prepared by Serbia, she explained.