Fajon Doesn’t Expect Opposition Parties Engaged in Boycott Back to the Parliament before 2020 Elections | Beta Briefing

Fajon Doesn’t Expect Opposition Parties Engaged in Boycott Back to the Parliament before 2020 Elections

Source: Beta/Blic
Archive / News | 31.12.19 | access_time 12:15

Tanja Fajon (Photo: STA / Bor Slana)


The chair of the European Parliament Delegation to EU-Serbia Stabilization and Association Parliamentary Committee, Tanja Fajon, told the Dec. 31 issue of Belgrade daily Blic she did not expect the opposition parties engaged in the parliamentary boycott to return to their MP seats before the 2020 elections.


Fajon, who has mediated the dialogue between the ruling coalition and the opposition, said that “the parliament, not the street, is the place for a dialogue,” noting that “it would have been easier if the Alliance for Serbia had been engaged in a constructive way and had exploited the opportunity to contribute to ensuring better election conditions.” Fajon added that she was no longer expecting those parties to return to the parliament before the next elections.


She also said that “under the Constitution, the Serbian president is the only competent authority to dissolve the parliament and schedule parliamentary elections.”

“A few months ago, he said that parliamentary elections would be in March 2020, to be held in parallel with municipal elections which have to be organized by the end of March next year. However, a consensus reached in the last dialogue round in December, provided arguments for pushing back the election day to ensure the implementation of all 17 commitments before the election campaign and enable voters to benefit from improved pre-election conditions,” Fajon specified.

She did not provide a clear answer as to whether an election boycott could challenge legitimacy of the elections in Serbia.

“We will continue to monitor the implementation of all the commitments and will keep exerting a positive level of pressure on all the interested parties, the Government, the parliament and relevant institutions to produce concrete results, including improvements to the work of the severely criticized the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM), and the creation of a Supervisory Committee for election campaign monitoring and bodies in relation to the elections and implementation of changes deriving from the amendments to four laws,” she said.

Fajon further said she expected the formation of a European Parliament delegation for election monitoring, which as a part of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), would be observing the upcoming parliamentary elections in Serbia.

Fajon stressed that “the enlargement process is ongoing and has never been suspended,” adding that “the western Balkan countries have never lost the prospect of EU integration.”

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