Law on Climate Change prepared with the support of the EU

Mr. Goran Trivan, Minister of Environmental Protection, Ms. Mateja Norčič, Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia, Mr. Nicolas Faye, Charge d’Affaires and First Counsellor, Embassy of France and Mr. Dušan Čarkić, Assistant Minister and Head of the Department for Contracting and Financing of EU Funded Programmes (CFCU), opened the Closing conference of the EU Twinning project „Establishment of a Mechanism for Implementation of Monitoring Mechanism Regulation (MMR)“.

The project, which officially started on 18th May 2015, was implemented by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia, French Ministry of Ecological and Solidary Transition and the Interprofessional Technical Centre for Studies on Air Pollution (CITEPA). The two-and-a-half-year-long Twinning project was funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Republic of Serbia (1,2 million EUR total). The overall objective of the project was to assist the Republic of Serbia to transpose and implement the environmental and climate Acquis through institutional building and improvement of environmental reporting infrastructure, with a purpose to ensure the alignment with the EU climate Acquis and fulfillment of the UNFCCC requirements.

The project contributed to the establishment of the legal and institutional framework necessary for monitoring and reporting on GHG emissions, as well as for reporting other information relevant to climate change. One of the main outputs of the Twinning Project is the Draft Law on Climate Change, which includes both the transposition of the Monitoring Mechanism Regulation (MMR), as well as the Emission Trading System Directive and the Directive on the availability of consumer information on fuel economy and CO2 emissions of new passenger cars. This legal framework will create a binding obligation for data collection and reporting to relevant national institutions. It will also facilitate the monitoring of climate change related laws, strategies and relevant sector policies, ensuring better strategic planning and adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change.

Administrative and institutional capacities of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Serbian Environmental Protection Agency were strengthened through a series of capacity building training sessions, thus creating a team of Serbian experts to fulfill the requirements of the EU climate change Acquis related to the MMR.

The project included 178 missions, 683 expert days, involving a team of 25 French, Slovenian and Belgian experts, who worked with Serbian colleagues in order to transfer the know-how and the EU best practice in the field of EU climate acquis. A broad range of national stakeholders, including governmental institutions, industry and civil society organisations were involved in this project.