Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said today in Prague that he is not an optimist and that he does not believe that Serbia will become part of the European Union by 2028, and neither will Montenegro.
"I wish all the best to Montenegro, but I don't believe that they will be part of the EU until 2028, I don't believe that we will either. We have EU interests that differ from ours from time to time," said Vučić at the panel "Rise of the Western Balkans in the EU," reports Beta.
He made an assessment that Serbia cannot be part of the EU before 2030, but that "no one knows what could happen in the meantime".
In the EU, he stated, "there is exhaustion on the subject of enlargement", and Serbia still has concrete steps to fulfill.
Vučić said earlier today that he will soon have a conversation with people from the Rio Tinto company, that he has some doubts that he will express, and that he will see if there is a solution or not.
After his participation in the security forum GLOBSEC in Prague, the President of Serbia told the journalists that he will have a long talk with the people from Rio Tinto, whom he told to prepare well.
He said that without guarantees for people's health and full protection of the environment, there is nothing to do with lithium mining in Serbia.
"Instead of thanking God that we have lithium, I guess we should feel cursed because some people with as little education as possible will explain to us how our children will have two heads, without a single fact," he added.
Vučić also said that Serbia's industry is driving the growth of the gross domestic product, as well as technology and innovation, but "we will have a decline in agriculture due to the drought."
Answering a question about the relations between Serbia and Russia and that he "plays on two sides", he said that he had not spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin for two and a half years "unlike some other European leaders" and that Serbia is not on two sides but on the way towards the EU.
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