Speaking at an international conference in Budapest on the subject of soft power, Zoltán Kovács, State Secretary for Public Diplomacy at the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice, said that the changes made over the past two years since the current government came to office have contributed towards strengthening civil society, and have enabled the emergence of conditions which make the use of soft power possible.
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Today the European Parliament adopted its Enlargement Report for Serbia. The EPP Group Spokesman on this Report, György Schöpflin MEP, welcomed all the achievements made by the country to date; however, he also noted that the road to EU membership will be long, at times difficult. "After achieving candidate status on 1 March 2012, Serbia needs to meet all the benchmarks and continue the reform process in order to get the date to start the EU accession negotiations. At the same time Serbia is in the middle of a political campaign, heading towards the elections on 6 May 2012. Hence this report can serve as a guide for the next Serbian government in its stance towards Europe", he pointed out.
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The topic of this debate has a decidedly bizarre aspect. There is no agreement on what the country that we are discussing should actually be called. For my part, I’m going to call it Macedonia. Of course, the country could always be called FYRO-Macedonia. On this basis, presumably, the French for a fruit salad should renamed a FYROM des fruits.
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The decision of the European Council in March to endorse Serbia’s candidacy has a twofold significance. With respect to Serbia, it marks the definitive end to the aftermath of the wars of Jugoslav succession and the lingering assumption – widely held at the time – that the Serbs were somehow the hereditary villains of the Balkans.
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The Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament accepted the report on Serbia's progress towards the European Union integration.
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I think we can all agree that what is happening in Syria - the use of force against political demands - is unacceptable and deplorable. The question in my mind, though, is why the resistance to change of any kind on the part of Syria's rulers is so obstinate. The Assad regime has offered not a single meaningful concession to the social forces demanding change.
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