Minister of European Integration Tanja Miščević said today for the Dnevni evropski servis of the Beta agency that Serbia first needed to fulfil the legal criteria in order to be able to join the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).
According to her, these are regulations in the field of payment services, prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism, bank operations, protection of competition, protection of personal data, etc.
SEPA is the EU’s payment integration initiative to simplify euro-denominated bank transfers.
Miščević said that the National Bank of Serbia had begun working on preparing the pre-notification of the application last year and had started much earlier to align with the law and regulations in that field.
“There is a huge benefit to potential membership in that programme. Namely, when Serbia becomes part of SEPA, the costs of any transaction will be significantly reduced (payments, remittances),” said Miščević.
She recalled the World Bank’s analysis of the specific benefits of SEPA membership, which showed that out of about EUR 12 billion that annually arrive in the Western Balkans as remittances due to the lack of a single payment method, half a billion euros are lost in other ways of transacting that money.
“And that is an example of only one type of banking transaction; we did not take into account the benefits for business entities,” Miščević pointed out.
The alignment of Serbia and other EU partners from the Western Balkans with financial regulations in order to join SEPA was on the agenda of the summit on the EU Growth Plan for the region held at the end of February in Tirana.
Today, the SEPA region consists of 36 European countries, including those that are not EU members.
Source: Dnevni evropski servis
Photo: Beta/europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
