New 1,647 internationally financed apartments in Serbia for regional refugees

Addressing the ceremony of presenting the keys to 11 apartments to the refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, 24 years after the wars in the two former Yugoslav republics ended, Dacic said that new flats would soon be ready in four other towns and a part of Belgrade.

The construction is financed within the Regional Housing Programme in Serbia.“We aim to be the most effective in helping our people who had to escape the conflict areas, after a long period of developing the programme’s mechanisms,” Dacic said.

The project is worth 285 million Euros. The European Union contributed with 232 million.

The chief of the EU Office in Belgrade Sem Fabrizi said that additional 2,500 housing units for the refugees and displaced people would be built in Serbia next year.

“In the next two years we will have another 2,500 flats so that by the end of the programme the number reaches 7,000 housing units,” Fabrizi was quoted as saying.

Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro take part In the Regional Housing Programme for the most endangered refugee families. The EU, the US, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Turkey, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary contributed financially to the Programme.