On Thursday 19 November 2015, H.Е. Ambassador Michael Davenport, Head of the Delegation of the European Union of the Republic of Serbia, Mr. Milosav Milickovic, State Secretary of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Serbia, Mr. Vladimir Cucic, Commissioner of the Republic of Serbia, Mr. Lars Westbratt, State Secretary for Migration, Ministry of Justice of Sweden, in the presence of high ranked representatives of the diplomatic core, international and nongovermental organisations and the representatives of the competent insititutions in the Republic of Serbia, attended the opening ceremony of the EU Twinning Project „Support to the National Asylum System in the Republic of Serbia“.

The Project is funded by the European Union within the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) and has a total budget of 1,000,000 EUR. The Project is implemented by Commissariat for Refugees and Migration and Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Serbia in partnership with the Swedish Migration Agency, Immigration and Naturalisation Service of the Netherlands and Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Slovenia. Bearing in mind that Twinning aims to provide the necessary skills and experience from the proper institutions of Sweden, Netherlands and Slovenia within the process of upgrading the Asylum System in Serbia, the aforementioned Project will be of great importance for further development of the asylum system in Serbia in the direction of additional meeting of the international standards.

The Project is to be implemented during the next two years and it will  provide aproximation of the Serbian legislation to the EU legislation relating to Asylum and accomplishing of the Preconditions defined within the Chapter 24 of the Action Plan for the Accession of Serbia to the European Union.

Through providing much more efficient asylum procedure, providing services in charge of unaccompained minor asylum seekers in line with international requirements, developing of the Serbian integration strategy and adequate integration support system for persons granted international protection in the Republic of Serbia, the competent services within the Ministry of Interior and the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration will be strengthened and an adequate response on challenges caused by intercontinental migration flows will be provided.

One of the Project aims is to inform wider comunity and to promote rights and obligations of asylum seekers in Serbia, as well as to inform about consequences of the abuse of the visa-free regime by the citizens of the Republic of Serbia.

The implementation of the project will have a great influence on humane and adequate treatment od asylum seekers, promotion of solidarity and tolerance, as the key values of the European union and European perspective of Serbia.