NATO and Security Challenges Facing Southeast Europe

The Balkan Region needs Serbia as a member of NATO, despite the fact that Belgrade is on the stance that, for now, membership in the Partnership for Peace programme is enough framework for cooperation with the alliance. This could be heard during the panel “NATO and Security Challenges Facing Southeast Europe” organized within the first Belgrade Security Forum.

Without membership in NATO, Serbia still can contribute to the security in the region. This has been shown by restrained reaction after the unilateral declaration of the Kosovo independence, the participants stated.

The main issue during this session was dedicated to a public support to the NATO membership. Although support for the membership is around 20 per cent in Serbia, during this debate it could be heard that if voting for the membership would be organized in Serbian National Assembly like in the case of voting for the neutrality, this could also result with increase of public support to the Serbian membership in this organization. This would happen only if the political will become more NATO-oriented.

Final mark during the discussion was that Serbia needs to be NATO member as well as other countries in the region because of the general security.