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B92 (21 June 2017)

Acting PM and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic will attend the annual meeting of foreign ministers of the Central European Initiative (CEI) in Minsk on Thursday.

The Serbian government announced this on Wednesday, noting that the CEI was established in 1989 through cooperation of four countries - Italy, Austria, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), and Hungary.

Today it has 18 members: Austria, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, the Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Montenegro. 

Ten countries are EU members, and the remaining eight are countries of the Balkans and the so-called European neighborhood. 

This year's chair of this initiative is Belarus and the priorities of its presidency are stronger infrastructure connectivity of the CEI region with the support of international financial institutions, support for entrepreneurship, promotion of modern digital solutions, as well as improving CEI's relations with the European Union, the government said, citing a statement from the Serbian MFA. 

Other priorities are support to the so-called Berlin Process and the Eastern Partnership, as well as continued cooperation with the United Nations and the OSCE. 

The CEI should also work on its reform and on the adoption of the Action Plan for the period from 2018 to 2020. Serbia chaired the Central European Initiative in 2011.

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