Public Discussion “Energy and Environment – Serbia on the Road toward the EU” was held in the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia
Representative of Aurora green participated at public discussion “Energy and Environment – Serbia on the Road toward the EU”, which was held in the Small Hall of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, on 29 April 2015, organised by European Policy Centre (CEP) from Belgrade.
Participants of the event that gathered numerous representatives of state bodies and institutions, as well as business and non-governmental sector, stated that there cannot be further development of the energy sector without assessing the impact of this development on the environment.
Professor Snežana Bogosavljević-Bošković, Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Protection, added that the issue of environmental protection is undoubtedly one of the biggest problems of modern civilisation.
The importance of the environmental impact assessment procedure lies in the fact that public authorities can therefore possess all the relevant information in order to take into account the environmental protection when deciding on the development projects, said the researcher at the European Policy Centre Stefan Šipka, and emphasised that “citizens have a key role in this process because they provide valuable information, transparency and legitimacy of the procedure.”
Stephen Tindale, researcher at the Centre for European Reform (CER) in London, presented a policy brief on the Energy Community and clean sources of energy, which in his opinion demonstrates the need and responsibility of the European Union to support the development of “clean energy” in its neighbouring countries.
Tindale pointed out that the EU’s policy must be based on fairness and that “it would not be fair if the European Union said to Serbia: ‘Do not burn your coal’, when many EU countries got rich by burning coal.” He, however, emphasised that producing energy by coal mining without pollution control is not sustainable and that the EU should consider stopping energy imports in the future from the countries that do not practice such control.
