On 5 February I hosted a reception to launch the Serbian end of the British-Serbian Chamber of Commerce (BSCC).
Trade between our two countries is growing well - it went up about 20 per cent last year - but we want to do more to promote awareness in the UK of the opportunities for trade and investment in Serbia, and vice versa. Sir David Roche, the BSCC Board Chairman, came out to Belgrade for the launch, which was even better attended than I had hoped, with a very wide range of Serbian companies represented. Fortunately it was a mild evening, so guests could spill out onto the terrace outside, or we would have been very squashed!
But that's a really good sign, and I hope that many more companies here and in the UK will sign up, now that they have seen and heard all about it.
Posted at 15:01 07 February 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[0]
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Friday 5 December: Another trip, another project - this time to attend the passing-out parade at the Police Basic Training Centre in Sremska Kamenica.
The British Council, with Embassy funding, have been working with the Interior Ministry to encourage candidates from Serbia's many different national communities to put themselves forward for the police entrance exam, and to support them through the application process. We have worked with the Centre to produce advertisements and materials in Albanian, Hungarian, Romanian, Roma, Ruthenian, Slovak, Bulgarian and Croatian, as well as in Serbian.
It seems to be working - the proportion of applications from minority community members is up this year. The thinking behind it all is simple - in a democratic society, effective policing needs the consent and cooperation of the whole community, and to get that you have to have good representation of all groups.
It's a lesson we have learned in the UK. We haven't achieved complete success there yet, by any means, but we know what needs to be done and we're sharing that experience now here in Serbia.
The ceremony itself was really uplifting, with proud parents, brothers and sisters crowding around, a band playing, marches and folk dancing, and all the newly-graduated cadets throwing their hats into the air. I wonder if they ever get the right ones back? Then at the end I was given a good-bye gift of a picture of a policeman, drawn by a 6-year old Art Workshop pupil - here it is
and it's now on our Embassy wall!
Posted at 19:56 08 December 2008 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[0]
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It's been a busy period, and so it is a good time to launch a blog!
The biggest item on my recent agenda has been the process of getting agreement to the launch of EULEX (the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo) throughout Kosovo.
On the one hand, Belgrade wanted EULEX to have UN Security Council approval, and for it to be status-neutral, with no link to the plan of the UN Status Envoy, President Ahtisaari. On the other, Pristina were insistent that EULEX should be based firmly on its Constitution. We got agreement in the end, building on the fact that the EU as an organisation has no position on Kosovo status, since not all member states have recognised Kosovo's independence.
If the EU has no position, the presence of an EU Mission, which all its members - recognisers and non-recognisers alike - have authorised, cannot confer status either way. And with Security Council approval for the UN Secretary General's report, the mission is launched.
Its task is important - to improve the standard of law and order throughout Kosovo. Once it gets started we hope that even those who were opposed to it will come to see that it is in the interests of all communities.
Apart from that I have been out of the office a lot, mainly in connection with a series of projects we have been working on here:
• the 5th anniversary celebration of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights
• a ceremony to celebrate the successful conclusion of a project
On the same evening as the press conference I was in Novi Sad for the opening of a British section in the city library. My wife read a story in English to some 40 children of around 8 to 10 years old. They all seemed to enjoy the story, and the cakes she brought with her. As always I am left enormously impressed with the standard of spoken English among people here, including the very young. I then went on to help the British Council launch their portfolio of booklets in Serbian, aimed at helping people to understand how to help disabled people take their proper place in society. It's a big and important area; every society defines itself by how it treats its weakest members. We have had some really good cooperation with local organisations here in Serbia; there is some good progress.
That's it for the moment - and in future I shall try to blog more often, and to make my entries shorter. But if you want to comment on any of this, or on anyting else to do with the United Kingdom's work here, just add your comments! There’s more about me on my about page.
Posted at 13:21 05 December 2008 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[17]
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