With the mission to Serbia led by Prime Minister Mario Monti, Italy is marking its first visit at Head of Government level since 2000. This is also Monti\u2019s first inter-governmental summit, and testifies to Italy\u2019s close bilateral relations and strategic partnership with Belgrade. <\/P>
\n
Italy is the main sponsor of Serbia\u2019s accession to the European Union. A long-term support, \u201cfirst from the Prodi Government and then from Berlusconi\u2019s, with Foreign Ministers D\u2019Alema and Frattini, and now from our executive\u201d, noted Monti. The Prime Minister told his hosts he had been \u201cdelighted\u201d to see Belgrade obtain candidate status on 1 March 2012 and shared Tadic\u2019s \u201cweek-old joy at being able to fly the EU flag\u201d in his country.<\/P>
\n
The Summit, which was attended by a large delegation of ministers, also served to further reinforce economic relations. Corrado Passera, the Minister for Economic development, explained that \u201cwe are Serbia\u2019s third economic and commercial partner and can aim to grow further. [\u2026] With the Serbian Government, we have identified important areas for collaboration in the fields of infrastructure, the railways, and enterprise. Significant Italian investments are in play\u201d. <\/P>
\n
A number of agreements were signed in Belgrade, on combating organised crime, drug trafficking and international terrorism. A memorandum was signed for collaboration in civil protection matters. Other agreements include a protocol on rural development and agricultural quality; cooperation in environmental protection matters; and a memorandum of understanding for IT cooperation between the Italian and Serbian finance police. Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi also a cooperation agreement on Belgrade\u2019s EU integration.<\/P>
\n
On Serbia\u2019s part, Tadic said he was \u201ccertain that we will continue to enjoy Italy\u2019s support\u201d on European enlargement. He stressed the important projects currently under way with Italy in the fields of energy and transport networks, and in the automobile, textiles and clothing sectors. Tadic noted that many Italian enterprises already operate in Serbia and provide jobs for 20,000 Serbian workers: from 150 companies in 2009 to 400 at present. \u201cWe are a country of producers, as I said to Monti, with a stable economy. We can achieve excellent results in the future too\u201d.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the mission to Serbia led by Prime Minister Mario Monti, Italy is marking its first visit at Head of Government level since 2000. This is also Monti\u2019s first inter-governmental summit, and testifies to Italy\u2019s close bilateral relations and strategic partnership with Belgrade. Italy is the main sponsor of Serbia\u2019s accession to the European Union. […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[44,9,42],"class_list":["post-20652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-approfondimenti","tag-energia-ambiente","tag-europa","tag-unione-europea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}