Welcome to the British Embassy's new website, and thank you for your interest in coming here.

This new web platform should offer you easier navigation, more interaction and better accessibility. With some of the new features like FCO blogging (why not take a look at my Blog, while you're here?), we are also offering diversity of information on the UK, details about services our Embassy offers and news on different activities we are organising or supporting.

Britain and Serbia have had a long and active relationship over many years. The world changes, political structures come and go, but the links between our peoples remain. I even have a tiny drop of Serbian blood in my veins, from some ancestors who lived here many hundreds of years ago.

2009 will be a challenging year for us all.  We strongly support Serbia's aim of joining the European Union.  Since the Government was formed in July 2008 there has been some important progress.  From the point of view of European integration, one very positive step was the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, in July.  This sent a very clear message about the new Government's determination to fulfil its obligations under international law and complete the process of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.  I hope the process can be completed soon, so we can support Serbia on the next steps - implementing the Interim Agreement, ratification by EU countries of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, Serbia applying for, and being granted candidate member status.  Meanwhile, however, things are not standing still, as some people sometimes fear.  The European Commission, for example, is spending nearly €200 million of European taxpayers' money (around €32m of it from the UK) in Serbia this year, on various activities to support the integration process.  And Serbia is pressing ahead with its own programme of legislation and reforms. 

As all this moves forward, we shall have to get better at managing our differences over Kosovo. We are very well aware that many people here were angered by our decision to recognise Kosovo as an independent state. But there was no other way forward.  Kosovo's independence is now a fact, recognised by the great majority of European states (including 22 out of 27 EU members) and many others, such as the USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia.  We understand how difficult this is here, and we are not asking Serbia to recognise Kosovo as part of the process of Serbia's EU integration.  But we need to find a way to stop our differences over Kosovo getting in the way of the integration process, and of all the other things we want to do together.  The agreement that was reached over the deployment of EULEX throughout Kosovo was a good example of what can be done.  We want to go on working positively on all this in 2009.  

But the biggest challenge for us all in 2009 will be coping with the global economic crisis.  Every country in Europe is facing the same problems, with unemployment rising, export markets disappearing, lending shrinking, consumption falling.  There will be some tough choices ahead.  We will all need to work together to come through this as best as we can.

Again, thank you for visiting our website. I hope you find what you were looking for here. The links to the various Sections will give you a good idea of the work we do, as will the Embassy News section and my Blog. If you want to visit Britain and need a visa, please use the on-line application service. If you need to contact us, our details are shown in Contact Us.