MAYOR OF NOVI SAD MEETS EXIT FESTIVAL VISITORS FROM KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

Mayor of Novi Sad Mr. Miloš Vučević and the Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo Mr. Branimir Stojanović, accompanied with the Exit Festival Manager Mr. Dušаn Kоvаčеvić, met today the numerous Festival visitors coming to Novi Sad from Kosovo and Metohija.

- It is without any doubt that EXIT razes borders in every sense, and that this organized visit from Kosovo and Metohija is proof that in what they do they are more than successful. This is the first time we have Festival visitors from Kosovo, and the most beautiful thing about it is that their group consists not only of members of all nations which live there – Serbs, Albanians, Gorani, Bosniaks, and others – but also of representatives of several NGOs, who all came together and are staying in our city. They say they have already had positive impressions of the festival, but also of the city, and I truly hope next year even more of them will come from Kosovo. I congratulate Mr. Kоvаčеvić and Mr. Stojanović for their accomplishment, to successfully realize, within only a few months, this project and bring these young people from Kosovo to Exit. By doing so, they have created one positive and optimistic picture, and we are able today – today when our people and our country face severe challenges – to send out one such positive idea from Novi Sad. It is the idea of the present and future, and not of the past and of opening the old wounds. – said Mayor Vučević and added that he is more than convinced that visitors from Priština, Gračanica, and other towns and cities will take home good impressions of Novi Sad, and that it will represent the best possible invitation for other young people from Kosovo to visit the Festival in 2016.  

Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo Mr. Branimir Stojanović said it is important that the young understand one must not be slave to the ancient frame of mind, or to function within the old matrices of the past which are unproductive, but that it is important to be released of old bondages, obliterate the prejudices, and invest into peaceful coexistence.

- This Festival has been awarded with numerous prizes and is much appreciated and acknowledged throughout the world. The whole world can learn from the example of EXIT, so it would be unthinkable that we, who live so close to it, miss such a chance. We, politicians, should create the environment and make prerequisites so that young people can receive their chance, to start their initiatives, and to change life in the future. I truly hope that by this move we showed which way one should go. – said Mr. Stojanović.

In Novi Sad, July 11^th 2015