EU representatives in Serbia said at a conference in Belgrade Monday that the field of translation studies was becoming all the more important in European integration processes in every potential EU member country.

Director of the Serbian government European Integration Office Milica Delevic pointed to Serbia's obligation to translate about 200,000 pages of the EU's Acquis Communautaire.

At a meeting organized to present the program 'Reforming Foreign Language Studies in Serbia', a Tempus project facilitated by the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, Delevic said that Serbia planned to translate about 35,000 pages of the acquis by end of year.

Tempus is an EU program designed to help the process of higher education reform in EU's partner countries. Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Vincent Degert pointed to the significance of the foreign language studies reform project and of training professional translators and interpreters in the country as the area was important for making further steps in European integration.

Degert noted that Serbia's following step on the EU path would be the opinion of the European Commission, due in October, adding that at the opening of the EU accession negotiations, the first element would be comparing the legal system of the candidate country with that of the European Union.

Head of the Council of Europe (CoE) Mission to Serbia Antje Rotemund said that the project was very ambitious when it came to strengthening professional language training capacities and that it was necessary for Serbia as an important resource since the country was aspiring to EU membership.

The aim of the project is carrying out a comprehensive reform of foreign language studies at all state universities in Serbia, standardizing the studies and introducing master's degree courses in the field of simultaneous and consecutive interpretation.

The partners in the project that was launched in December 2010 are the Serbian Ministry of Education and Science, local universities incorporating foreign language studies, higher education institutions from a number of EU countries - Universities of Strasbourg, Versailles, Graz, Bratislava, Southampton, as well as regional chambers of commerce and Serbia's National Employment Service and its European Integration Office.

The meeting was attended by State Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Science Radivoje Mitrovic, who pointed out that a total of 40 Tempus projects worth EUR 6.3 million were currently being realized at Serbia's faculties and universities, as well as by Rector of the University of Belgrade Branko Kovacevic, who proposed to hold the conference.