BELGRADE, May 11 (Xinhua) -- In a time of great challenges for the European Union (EU), it needs to provide a clear membership perspective for Serbia and the region, for the sake of stability and peace, Maja Gojkovic, speaker of the Serbian parliament said on Friday.

Holding an opening speech at the parliamentary conference "Idea of EU, path to peace and development" , Gojkovic said that Serbia is dedicated to the European integration process through "respecting principles and criteria for accession", but stressed that the European perspective of Serbia needs to be credible and concrete.

The two-day conference at the Serbian parliament gathered MPs from EU countries, candidate countries, international organizations, diplomats and civic sector, to discuss relations among NATO, EU and Russia, as well as the EU enlargement and the relation between the fiscal and monetary policy, a press release of the parliament said.

Gojkovic estimated that the EU perspective needs visible goals that are set by "a strong and stable EU, guided by principles on which it was founded", and repeated that the membership is the top priority of Serbia's foreign policy.

She said that the strength of the EU lies in its potential to enlarge, while on the other hand it is faced with some of the fiercest challenges since it was founded -- terrorism, illegal migration, residues of economic crisis, unsolved conflicts in Europe and in the Middle East as well as the Brexit.

"These challenges haven't been avoiding our region too. This is why it is so important that the relations and cooperation in the region are built on the basis of mutual acknowledgment, trust and understanding, so we can build stability and secure permanent peace in the region," Gojkovic concluded.