Parliamentary Assembly

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

I am sorry to say this, and maybe my words will ruin some stupid political barriers that we ourselves have made, but those are not the numbers of people. Many countries are exaggerating the numbers; it is not a question of tens of thousands per day. One day we had 9 000, and one single country faced 10 000 in one day. For some reason, we always exaggerate, but I do not know why we do so.

You are right, there will be difficult conditions for those people in winter, with rain and snow. They will have to stay for more than two to three days. We are preparing for that with the support of some German humanitarian organisations, Norway, Austria and some other countries along with the European Commission. We are building reception centres and increasing our capacity to take care of those people. That is our job, and it is very normal.

To show you how much we exaggerate the numbers, only – though obviously the word “only” is relative – 1 750 people crossed our border yesterday. It is not always as the media report it. Also there are statesmen who would always like to emphasise their great role, talking about thousands and thousands of people, but that is not the case. You can always ask the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; it has the same numbers as the Serbian authorities. We do not hide any of those data. We have registered 164 000 people, and our assumption is that 200 000 have crossed our border. It is impossible that 220 000 have crossed Hungary’s border and 60 000 have crossed Croatia’s. Such large numbers of people have not entered their countries. Anyway, I shall leave all the blame games and numbers games to the European Union countries.

Of course we are still talking about a large number of people, and I notice that we are facing a greater percentage of people coming from Afghanistan than from Syria. At the beginning, 71.29% of refugees were coming from Syria; now that figure is about 58%. More and more people are coming from Afghanistan and we have noticed something else, as have some other countries: there are even people from Pakistan who have taken Afghan passports and joined the refugees. That is an issue that someone will have to deal with in future. We need a comprehensive European solution.

We will take care of those people, as I said, and we are also ready to take our share. If our neighbouring countries take 1 000 of those refugees, we are ready to take 1 000, 2 000 or whatever you say. We just want to be a part of European society, not only when you deliver money to countries from European Union funds – we do not get it in the way that all the other countries do – but because we want to share the responsibilities. We want to send you all the clear message that we belong to that club, even under these very difficult circumstances, and we are ready to take up our burden.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

I was invited by Chancellor Merkel to Berlin to brainstorm on this issue when we proposed our bigger assistance to the European Union. What we were asking for was always a comprehensive solution, and we will be part of that. Do not worry about Serbia – we will deliver on all our obligations and we are ready to fulfil all our tasks. We had a very fruitful discussion with Chancellor Merkel and with Werner Faymann. I had a lot of discussions with Mr Orbán. We did not agree on some issues, but I think we succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties that we were facing with regard to the migrant crisis. Serbia and Hungary are in a very good relationship today. We spoke to Johannes Hahn when he visited Serbia, and to Federica Mogherini as well. We were always very ready to accept all the requests and all the remarks from the European Union, from the Council of Europe, and from all our friends, who always praised our hard work, although I thought we deserved more rewards on our economic reforms than on what was just a normal attitude and normal behaviour regarding the migrant crisis. We will carry on co-operating very closely with all our European partners.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

The lustration law was brought into force in 2001 and lasted for 10 years. That was a limited time in which to face the consequences of violating or breaching human rights in the past. Very recently, we had a proposal on this from a regional political party from Vojvodina that we still have not discussed in our parliament. This is not the biggest issue that I have been concerned with. We have already discussed not only the proposals of our political colleagues but the proposals that we might get from the Venice Commission and from the European Union. I am very dissatisfied with the efficiency of our courts, which means that you can still find some unresolved files from 1996 to 1997. What kind of justice do we speak about if you have cases unresolved for 20 years? It is no longer about seeking justice; it is about something else. I do not say that justice has to come in a quick way, but after 20 years it is no longer any kind of justice. That is what we need to reshape and change. We need to change our habits. I am still very dissatisfied with our approach, but I am satisfied that we have finished the cleaning process. We will probably open the first chapters by the end of this year, but we will also open chapters 23 and 24 at the beginning of next year.

I hope that we will be able to do this together with our European colleagues, and to learn much more, perform much better, and deliver much better. I am always a bit constrained about this, because someone might say, “This is your involvement or interference in an independent judicial area or justice area.” That is why I cannot comment very openly on things that are very visible for ordinary citizens of Serbia. I am profoundly grateful to you and to all your colleagues for paying attention to this issue. We will be very glad to learn a lot more in the future and to deliver in a much better way so that, first of all, all Serbian citizens should be more satisfied than they are today. You are together with all of us – thank you.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

Dear Mr Davies, I was not speaking about rights of the sovereign States; I was speaking about the attitude that we all took to this crisis. I cannot agree with everything that you said. I have nothing against the will of our neighbours to stop the migrants’ influx into their countries, but what we need, and needed from the very first moment, was a comprehensive solution. You cannot leave all those guys in, say, Macedonia, because we can do the same, so why that country? What if we do it? What will Greece do with them? What will Tsipras do with them? That is why we need the comprehensive, pan-European solution that I was insisting on finding. When I spoke to Viktor Orbán, we agreed on some things and disagreed on others, but today I can say that we have a very good relationship. He understands Serbia’s position, and I always do my best to understand Hungary’s position. I cannot say that I am very pleased with the barbed wire, but he protects his own country. It is his way of dealing with this, and we respect that. For us, it is more important to hear what would be your comprehensive European solution, and we will act in accordance with that. That is very simple for our side. I agree with you that the crisis should have been settled at its places of origin, which means Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. As a small country, Serbia cannot contribute a lot to that, but we will always be very ready to what we can. There is only simple question from our side: what is your comprehensive solution for the migrant crisis? Whatever it is, we will deliver on that and act in accordance with it.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

Thanks a lot; it will be an unusual response. Only 15 days after we won the last elections, we faced those really terrible floods. At that time, if I asked my people whether to go for difficult economic and political reforms and whether to carry on our discussions with Kosovo Albanians and do the same with all the others in the region, I would always get a negative response. So I did not ask anything of them. I said to them that the only thing that I was guaranteeing to them was sweat and tears, and I said that we would have a hard-working period of two or three years, and after that, I delivered on everything that was very difficult for our country. As you know, recently, on 25 August, we signed four agreements for an arrangement with Pristina and we will have the resumption of talks on 13 October. I will be asking our people at the next elections.

The lesson I learnt from my own experience – the most important lesson, because you can then tackle all the important issues – is not to care about people’s reactions. Whenever I visit those migrants and refugees, I face the biggest number of negative comments from our public audience, and I do not care. When those stupid, rightist, extremist parties wanted to organise rallies against the migrants, I said, “No, it’s not going to happen in this country. You can organise as many protest rallies against me and against the government, but against the migrants? Not a single one.” We banned it and I did not care about people’s reaction – sorry to use those words. That was the only way that we were able to deliver good results in different social spheres, and that is why I was insisting on emphasising regional stability. Perhaps I should not say “frightened”, but I am still very much afraid of the possibility that someone might destabilise the region. I am not afraid of the hard work that we will have to put in regarding the economic recovery. We are not a rich country and we will not be a very rich country, even in 10 years, but we are moving step by step. We will keep the pace up and do things even better. The lesson that I learnt was this: do what is best for your country and do not care too much about the public audience.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

Mr Badea, thank you for noticing that we have done our best to establish and promote the best relationship with our Romanian friends. After the Second World War, that is something that I can also say for the Hungarians. We have not had a bad relationship so far, which is great news for our people and our nations.

I want to add that that is because all the others cannot understand us when we speak about Vlachs or the Romanian language. It is an issue of a Romanian minority, or a Vlach minority, and we have something that was established here at the Council of Europe, and I visited your Prime Minister. We spoke to the Romanian community and the Vlach community and had no problems with any of them. I will always be very ready to host my friend and to go there and see what we can do to improve not only the living standards of those people, but the human rights performance for all of them. We have no problems with that.

We have no problems with people who want to speak Romanian speaking Romanian, but we cannot force anybody to speak Romanian if he says that he speaks some other language. That is his right in accordance with the Council of Europe charters and regulations and in accordance with our constitution. However, I am always ready to discuss every single issue that you can put in front of us – together with your prime ministers and with all of you – and to visit every single part of Serbia, just to see that we do not violate people’s human rights and to discuss together with your people how we can accomplish and achieve even better results in the future. Once again, many thanks to you.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

Thank you Sandra. Those warm welcoming words were because she is a member of my political party. I want to respond differently from how Sandra would expect me to. I think that there are many leaders in the Balkans committed to peace and stability. I do my best not only here, but when I have tête-à-tête discussions with Ms Brasseur, European officials and all the others, not to use my time to criticise my colleagues, because I think that if I do not reply to every single statement on every single issue, those people – if there are some people – will repeat it, and that approach works.

I will do my best to see, first, whether I have made mistakes. What did I do to them? What have we done against the interests of others? I will also do my best to correct our bad words and statements. If we are successful in changing ourselves, we will at least be able to be silent from time to time and not cause any further problems. I am not saying that because it is something that you would like to hear in this place; that is our politics, and we will be dedicated to sticking to that path. I say the same thing in my country every day, and it is not very popular. People in the Balkans still like those self-victimisation stories, and they like to hear tough words about their neighbours: “He said it to them. He delivered on that. He didn’t allow those guys to humiliate us.” You have to swallow something from time to time. That is how our politics will be in future, and although we will always do our best to protect the interests of our State, that will not be at the expense of other States’ interests.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

That is the most difficult question for me. Unlike many guys from Serbia, I am not an expert on every single issue. We have many candidates for the big posts in the world – the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, of this and of that. We consider Armenia and Azerbaijan friendly countries, and I hope that the OSCE will tackle that issue in a proper way. I wish you all the best. To be very honest, I know nothing about the issue. I heard that someone was going to ask me about it, but I would be ashamed to act as though I know about it when I know almost nothing.

I shall speak with our Foreign Minister, who is the Chairman of the OSCE, to tackle the issue in a proper way that you and people from Azerbaijan will be satisfied with. I hope that the OSCE will be able to deliver on that issue in the best possible way. We did our best by investing a great effort in the chairmanship, and I think that others were satisfied with our work. I am not an expert who can resolve all the crises in the world – we have a lot of work to do on our own crises – but we will always be very friendly towards your country, and again I wish you all the best.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

Josip knows how difficult it is to increase stability, particularly in our region. Our youth programmes and exchanges were praised at the Vienna conference – a resumption of the Berlin conference – attended by Angela Merkel, Faymann and Mogherini. That was quite something for us all. Although I did not notice a lot of interest among some Western Balkan countries, Albania and our country did a good job. Edi Rama was very helpful, and he was doing his best, along with us, to establish the youth office. We succeeded, and now we need to discuss where it will be headquartered, which could be in both Tirana and Belgrade. When I see Edi Rama in seven or eight days, we will discuss that issue, and all the others should join us.

I got this badge from Anne Brasseur with the message “No Hate”. Rama and I had the idea of promoting not only peace and stability, but speech with no hatred and a better understanding between young people. It was his idea – I shall not decorate myself with it – to welcome 65 Serbian students to Albania for a football match, and then I should welcome 65 Albanian students to Belgrade. We do not know each other; we did not speak to each other for 70 years, and there are many prejudices between us, but now it is getting better. The most important issue is, as with the Germans and the French after the Second World War, what we do today to establish a different relationship between our two countries and between our young people. Although we are not always satisfied with the speed of that process, it is important and I think that we may deliver very good results in future.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

Thank you very much for noticing some of the good things that we have delivered recently. We have great co-operation and collaboration with Hungarians in particular, who form one of the biggest minorities in our country and whose representatives are part of our Government. We have good common results, and we are very satisfied with that co-operation. The councils play a big role. They have the right to propose textbook content, for instance, and we support and translate them. We help them out on every single important issue.

Almost 70 years after the Second World War, I visited some Hungarian cemeteries, because no Serbian official has ever wanted to see one, nor did Yugoslav officials at the time. We went there, and I think we succeeded in creating a better atmosphere for reconciliation between Serbs and Hungarians after the Second World War. I do not see huge problems. I would like it if a representative of the Hungarian minority were here to speak. For my own part, I would immediately confirm every single word he pronounced.

Mr Vučić, Prime Minister of Serbia

My response is simple: yes, we will do it together, in accordance with the European Commission. We will harmonise our legal system with the European Commission. But it is not about chasing good businesspeople; it is about the fight against corruption. That was the only way that we could fight the beast of corruption in our country. We know what we need to do in future, but let me remind you that not so long ago, mine was a country where the tycoons decided everything. They were above the legal system, and they were dictating all the regulations and everything else. That has been changed.

It does not mean that someone will be prosecuted or indicted just for being richer than some other guys. Yes, there are things that we need to change and we will, but that was not the intention. That was a campaign launched against us recently because there are many criminals afraid of upcoming verdicts. I understand your question and I hope that we will be able to harmonise our legal system with the European Commission as soon as possible. That is one of the most important tasks before us.