Aleksandra Đurović

Aleksandra Đurović
Александра Ђуровић
Personal details
Born (1976-05-19) May 19, 1976 (age 48)
Sarajevo, Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia
NationalitySerbian
Political partySNS
ProfessionPolitician

Aleksandra Đurović (Serbian Cyrillic: Александра Ђуровић; born May 19, 1976) is a politician and diplomat in Serbia. She served in the National Assembly of Serbia from 2012 to 2017 as a member of the Serbian Progressive Party and now serves as the head of Serbia's permanent mission to the Council of Europe.

Private career

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Đurović was born in Sarajevo, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She attended the University of Belgrade Faculty of Economics and is a professor of the Serbian language. Subsequently, based in Belgrade, she was a founding member of the Progressive Party in 2008.[1]

Parliamentarian

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Đurović received the thirtieth position on the Progressive Party's Let's Get Serbia Moving electoral list in the 2012 Serbian parliamentary election and was elected when the list won seventy-three mandates.[2] She was re-elected in 2014 and 2016, in each case after receiving high positions on the Progressive Party's coalition list.[3] The Progressive Party led Serbia's coalition government throughout Đurović's time in parliament, and she served as part of its parliamentary majority.

Đurović became a deputy member of Serbia's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in 2012,[4] serving as part of the European People's Party political group.[5] She was promoted to leader of the delegation in 2013 and also became chair of the Serbian parliament's foreign affairs committee in 2014. In these roles, she played an active role in Serbia's international diplomacy via these positions and, among other things, worked to strengthen ties between Serbia and Russia. She called for the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine to be resolved by a negotiated settlement in 2014,[6] and the following year she led Serbia's PACE delegation in unanimously rejecting a motion to deny Russian representatives the right to vote in the assembly as a result of the conflict.[7] She also represented Serbia in diplomatic meetings with representatives from Belarus,[8] Georgia,[9] Romania,[10] Bulgaria,[11] Hungary,[12] and other countries.

In December 2015, Đurović informed the Serbian parliament that twenty-six Serbian citizens had participated in the Syrian Civil War, of whom seven had returned to Serbia and eight of whom were deceased. She added that "those who have returned are under police surveillance," and that there was "no threat of terror attacks."[13] In the same month, she remarked at a joint meeting of Russian and Serbian parliamentarians that "Serbia is militarily neutral and does not want to become a member of NATO," adding that only about twelve per cent of Serbian citizens support joining that alliance.[14]

Following the 2016 election, Đurović became the vice-chair of the foreign affairs committee. She continued to serve as head of Serbia's PACE delegation; was a member of Serbia's committee on administrative, budgetary, mandate and immunity issues; led Serbia's parliamentary friendship delegation to Russia; and was a member of the parliamentary friendship delegations to Azerbaijan, China, Italy, Qatar, and Spain.[15]

Đurović was selected as vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in January 2017.[16] She was also a full member of PACE's committee on legal affairs and human rights and its committee on political affairs and democracy, chaired its subcommittee on external relations, and was a member or alternate member of other committees.[17]

On August 2, 2017, Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić appointed Đurović as the head of Serbia's permanent mission to the Council of Europe.[18] She formally resigned from the assembly on September 8, 2017.[19]

References

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  1. ^ ALEKSANDRA ĐUROVIĆ, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 18 April 2017.
  2. ^ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине, 6. мај 2012. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (POKRENIMO SRBIJU - TOMISLAV NIKOLIĆ) Archived 2017-09-11 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 26 January 2017.
  3. ^ Đurović received the eighteenth list position in 2014 and the fourteenth in 2016. The Progressive Party and its allies won landslide victories in these electoral cycles, taking more than one hundred seats in each instance. See Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 16. и 23. марта 2014. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ALEKSANDAR VUČIĆ - BUDUĆNOST U KOJU VERUJEMO) Archived 2018-05-06 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 26 January 2017; Избори за народне посланике 2016. године » Изборне листе (АЛЕКСАНДАР ВУЧИЋ - СРБИЈА ПОБЕЂУЈЕ) Archived 2018-04-27 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 17 February 2017.
  4. ^ Aleksandra DJUROVIĆ, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, accessed 13 October 2017.
  5. ^ Aleksandra DJUROVIĆ, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, preserved by the Internet Archive from 31 October 2013.
  6. ^ "Serbian pundits ponder if Russia's sanctions to increase pressure on Belgrade," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 13 August 2014 (Source: Dnevnik, Novi Sad, in Serbian 9 Aug 14).
  7. ^ "Serbian PACE member says delegation pressured to "punish" Russians," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 5 February 2015 (Source: Vecernje novosti website, Belgrade, in Serbian 0000 gmt 30 Jan 15). See also "Serbia to Support Russia at Next Vote on Moscow's Credentials in PACE - Lawmaker," Sputnik News Service, 17 December 2015.
  8. ^ "Deputy Foreign Minister Kupchyna meets with senior Serbian government officials in Belgrade," BelaPAN, 18 February 2015.
  9. ^ "Bakradze and Joksimovic Discuss Integration of Georgia and Serbia to EU," Black Sea Press (Georgia), 28 October 2015.
  10. ^ "Meeting of Romania's Senate, Serbia's National Assembly committees for foreign affairs," AGERPRESS, 23 February 2015.
  11. ^ "Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian Parliamentary Committees Discuss Refugee Flow, EU Enlargement, Energy Projects," Bulgarian News Agency, 22 October 2015.
  12. ^ "Hungary, Serbia to hold joint govt meeting in July, says Nemeth," MTI - EcoNews, 4 May 2015.
  13. ^ "Serbian MP says 26 citizens fought in Syria, of whom seven returned, eight died," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 3 December 2015 (Source: Radio B92 text website, Belgrade, in English 0000 gmt 2 Dec 15).
  14. ^ "Serbia Not Planning to Join NATO - Lawmaker," Sputnik News Service, 17 December 2015.
  15. ^ ALEKSANDRA DJUROVIC, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 18 April 2017.
  16. ^ Aleksandra Đurović potpredsednica PS Saveta Evrope, Blic (source: Tanjug), 23 January 2017, accessed 18 April 2017.
  17. ^ Aleksandra DJUROVIĆ, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, accessed 18 April 2017.
  18. ^ "Srbija ostaje bez ambasadora u Velikoj Britaniji", Blic (source: Beta), 10 August 2017, accessed 20 September 2017.
  19. ^ Current legislature, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 20 September 2017.