Serbia overwhelmingly backed a European Union pre-membership pact on Tuesday as well as an energy pact with Russia, in what the prime minister called a bid to build a bridge between the East and West. The 250-seat parliament voted 140 to 28 for the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the first step towards full EU membership.
It then voted 214 to 22 for the energy deal with Russia, giving its gas export monopoly full control over Serbia's oil and gas resources. "Serbia has made a huge step today towards European integration and a better life," Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said in a statement filmed by a local video news agency.
"We have also adopted the agreement with Russia as we wanted to demonstrate we can cooperate at the same time with the East and the West," Cvetkovic said. "We would like Serbia to be a driving engine in the region and offer some kind of a bridge between the East and the West."
The European Commission welcomed the news that parliament, where nationalists and Socialists still represent a strong force, backed the SAA. "The Commission encourages any measure by Serbia that brings Serbia closer to EU," a spokeswoman for EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told a news briefing. Analysts said the vote meant Serbia had taken an irreversible path to the EU. It came amid a split in the nationalist Radical Party, previously the second strongest political force opposing EU membership.
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