Antic: I Expect All Open Issues with Energy Community to Be Resolved

The Serbian minister of mining and energy, Aleksandar Antic, said on March 23 that he expected all open issues to be resolved in talks with the director of the Energy Community, Janez Kopac.

He told reporters that he would meet with Kopac in Belgrade during the first week of April.

"We will discuss all open issues, and Serbia is accelerating towards fulfilling all the European directives and catching up with the EU standards," Antic stated.

As he explained, the job of the European Community is to constantly remind the members to fulfill the directives, and Serbia should work on that and seek realistic and rational solutions at the meetings.

"So far, we have always found solutions to problems with the Secretariat of the Energy Community, and I do not see why we should not reach a good agreement this time," Antic said, adding that the Energy Community was not a body that imposed sanctions and that its function was to support the member states in carrying out the necessary steps.

The Secretariat of the Energy Community recently announced that it had resumed the proceedings against Serbia over the agreement on natural gas deliveries with Russia, which violated the competition principles, and that Serbia had two months to correct the irregularities.

According to the explanation, the 2012 agreement with Russia envisaged that the gas delivered to Serbia was intended solely for the Serbian market, which is not in accordance/ti with the regulations of the Energy Community.

(Beta, 24.03.2017)