Serbia and the European Investment Bank (EIB) are working on projects worth a billion Euro, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said after Thursday’s meeting with EIB President Werner Hoyer.

“If there is one area where we see the importance of the European Union, it’s the projects we are working on with the EIB. The value of those joint projects in the past 10 years is seven billion Euro,” she said.  

She said Serbia and the EIB are currently working on projects mainly in the health care sector like the Clinical Center in the southern city of Nis.  

Brnabic said the projects include the IT industry, water supply and waste water treatment systems as well as IT infrastructure for schools. “Serbia will be a different country by the end of this government’s term in office,” the Prime Minister said.

Investors like the projects in Serbia and they see the prospects in transport and infrastructure projects in the region, The EIB president said.

Hoyer said people are the most important thing in these projects and added that people in Serbia are far ahead of others in Europe in terms of understanding digitalization. “What the citizens of Serbia know about the digital world is much more than what people in other countries know and we are talking about the creative side of digitalization, not just technical links but a new level of creativity,” he said, adding that the goal is to bring the citizens of Serbia as close as possible to life in the European Union.