Czech MEP calls for Serbia’s EU negotiations to be suspended after Minister Paunović’s statement

Serbian Minister Snezhana Paunović’s statement has prompted a reaction from Czech MEP Tomas Zdechovsky, who described it as unacceptable and called for Serbia to be removed from the European Union integration negotiation process.

“I was completely shocked by what I heard from Serbia’s minister. It was not only shocking, but something utterly unacceptable. If this woman is truly a minister, we should remove Serbia from the negotiations,” he said.

Zdechovsky compared the Serbian minister’s stance to the genocide committed by the Nazis against Jews after World War II.

“It is as if someone, after visiting Auschwitz following World War II, said that Hitler was the best solution to the Jewish question. This is completely unacceptable. We must send a clear message: no one with this kind of rhetoric will join the European Union,” he stressed, Euronews Albania reported.

Meanwhile, Albanian MP in Serbia’s parliament Shaip Kamberi announced that a formal request was submitted on Thursday for the dismissal of State Administration and Local Self-Government Minister Snezhana Paunović over her statements on the ethnic cleansing of Albanians during the 1990s.

The request was initiated by the parliamentary group Free Citizens Movement – SDA of Sandžak and the Party for Democratic Action. Other opposition MPs have also joined it.

A few days ago, Snezhana Paunović, Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government in the Serbian Government, made statements considered scandalous about Kosovo in an interview with a Serbian media outlet.

The minister in Vučić’s government stated that, if she had had the freedom of action that Slobodan Milošević had, she would have “ethnically cleansed Kosovo during the war.”