The Chairman of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, Predrag Markovic today held a press conference devoted to the implementation of Phase One of the Tolerance Programme, organised by the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in co-operation with the Parliament of the Republic of Hungary.

The Youth Tolerance Camp is the fruit of several months’ work and co-operation between the two parliaments. “Parliaments are the most responsible for everything that happens in a country, as they represent the majority of the population in parliamentary life”, Markovic said. The two parliaments co-operated in late 2004 to resolve inter-ethnic tensions and issues in Vojvodina, while activities of the Chairman of the Serbian Assembly and his contribution to solving these issues were even recorded in a report of the European Commission. The co-operation between the Serbian Assembly and the Hungarian Parliament is based on solving problems through the creation of an institutional framework. This is further evidenced by the Declaration on the Implementation of the Tolerance Programme, signed on 4 February 2005. The Tolerance Programme has three phases, of which the Youth Camp, to be organised in Subotica from 25 to 28 May 2005, is the first. Phase Two is an economic forum, also to be held in Serbia, from 29 September to 5 October 2005, while Phase Three will be another Youth Camp, this time in the Hungarian city of Szeged, scheduled for 2006. Mr Markovic underlined that the recent Conference of Speakers of Parliaments of European Union Countries assessed the Tolerance Programme as a positive example of parliamentary co-operation. He added that Serbia could make use of such co-operation to access funds it needs for growth, as well as that it was necessary to co-operate with countries in the region that had undergone the process of preparing to join the European Union and had become its members, of which Hungary was a good example.

The Tolerance Youth Camp aims to acquaint young people of the majority ethnic group of each country with minority communities, Serbs and Hungarians respectively. The Camp is intended for secondary school students, members of student parliaments from Serbia, members of the Hungarian National Minority Council, as well as Serb and Hungarian secondary school students from Hungary. They are to be addressed, on issues of tolerance, by representatives of the local community, officials of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and the Parliament of the Republic of Hungary, as well as representatives of the European Parliament.