EU Integration Minister: Brussels Hasn’t even Hinted any Reason for Suspending Payments to Serbia

Tanja Miscevic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC)

Serbian EU Integration Minister Tanja Miscevic on Feb. 27 said that over the past decade, the European Commission (EC) had not even hinted at any reason for taking away the granted jobs or suspending payment of funds to Serbia over suspected fraud or misuse, stressing that a system for EU funds management and control was in place in Serbia and had been under constant EC supervision.   

In a release, the EU Integration Ministry said that since 2014, when the EC decided to entrust Serbia with managing EU grants, institutions in Serbia had been performing jobs of programming, contracting, monitoring, reporting, financial management, control and auditing in compliance with relevant rules relating to the EU pre-accession funds. 

Miscevic also said that in case of such suspicions, the usual practice of the EU would be to resort to payment suspension. She added that the EC had decided to entrust Serbia with managing funds under new EU instrument, IPA III, after it had verified that Serbia had fulfilled the required legal, institutional and administrative preconditions and that the system for managing and controlling EU funds had been functioning. 

Those preconditions, according to Miscevic, were met with establishing a relevant framework for managing and controlling EU funds, which had been carefully reviewed by EC auditors to get assured in the preparedness to manage the funds. ”We have no knowledge of the European Parliament having any intention to analyze how EU funds are being spent, which is an unusual control method, but the parliament, as a political body is entitled to analyze any sort of activity,” Miscevic specified.