France returns to Serbia

Yesterday, prime ministers of Serbiaand France, Aleksandar Vucic and Manuel Vals and the mayor Sinisa Mali, signedMemorandum of understanding on metro construction. Apart from metro, five agreementsmore were signed.

With the visit of the prime ministesManuel Vals, France is returning to Serbia after a break during which therewere no visits as such high level. After political games in previous period,they gave up big investment in Serbia and it is a good this this problem wassolved, it is a mutual estimation of collocutor of Danas, Predrag Simic and IvaViskovic, former ambassadors in France and Germany.

- The thing that is important for us is support to EU integration of Serbia and continuity of French investments which, after Danone’s disqualification at tender for Knjaz Milos, and business failures of Vinci and Bouygues at tender for Corridor 11 were coming in small portions – former representative of Serbia in Paris mentions.

He specifies the French are interested in metro in Belgrade.

- They offer EUR 5 m for that job. They want to invest in designing but they do not want tender but direct approach – Simic says.

Turning to the ineptest for the Nikola Tesla airport, Simic mentions that Vinci is interested in renting airport.

According to him, story about investments of France in Serbia is quite long.

- Due to certain games with respect to some companies, big French investments were abandoned as an idea. It is a good thing they are still interested in us since Serbia cannot do anymore without big foreign investments. Every foreign investment is very important for Serbia – Viskovic said.

As Danas finds out, estimations of economists who advise the prime minister and responsible ministers were that the objective of the Serbian government should be strategic partnership through concession model for the airport with some of the French companies because, as Danas’ sources claim, "Germans took over everything in the west, Turks in the east and for Serbia, it would be good if it were the French so that it would keep national airline Air Serbia"".

Let us remind, former mayor of Belgrade, Dragan Djilas announced in mid-2013 the beginning of construction of city metro in two years latest. He then outlined that EBRD will set aside a loan for metro totaling EUR 600 m. Djilas then announced that based on intergovernmental agreement, France wil invest conducts and electrical equipment while EBRD loan should pay construction works, in line with the plan.