Vucic: We do not want Serbia to be a parking lot for migrants, we signed an important memorandum

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is addressing the public after a trilateral meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Belgrade, Pink reports.

“I welcome you, it is a great honor for Serbia and me to have such friends with us and to solve big problems. We have signed an important memorandum and we are starting the action before the end of the year. We are talking about illegal migrants whose number has doubled compared to last year, most of them arriving from Afghanistan, about 40 percent,” Vucic said.

As he says, it has been agreed to deploy a larger number of police officers on the border with North Macedonia.

“We have big problems in the north of the country, migrants stay in our territory”, Vucic said, adding that we wanted to move the border to the south.

“We have always shown solidarity towards refugees, but we do not want it to be a parking lot for migrants,” the President emphasized.

The President thanked Viktor Orbán for all his support to Serbia.

“We would have a hard time this winter if it hadn't been for Viktor Orbán's understanding. Thanks to him, I want to say this to all the citizens of Serbia, we would have a hard time this winter if it hadn’t been for Orban and his government to let us store gas into their capacities. The electricity consumption in Serbia on such beautiful day is unbelievable. We have everything and we will have everything thanks to the understanding of Viktor Orbán and the government of Hungary. We want you to know that you have the gratitude of all of us,” the President said.

The second trilateral summit began with a meeting between Vucic and Orbán and Nehammer at the Presidency of Serbia, followed by a plenary meeting of the delegations of the three countries.

The first trilateral summit on illegal migration was held on October 3 in Budapest, and Vucic then announced that Serbia, which was the result of an agreement between the three leaders, would largely harmonize its visa policy with the EU by the end of the year.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán arrived in Belgrade this morning for a trilateral summit, and were met at Nikola Tesla Airport by Finance Minister Sinisa Mali.

"Serbia well prepared for the winter, gas is saving us"

The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, said today that Serbia was prepared well for the winter with respect to energy sources and invested a lot of money. It will have enough gas, but also it has started to use up reserves because the contracted quantities on a daily basis are not enough to meet the needs as Informer reports.

Answering the question whether Serbia will have enough gas during the winter, as it has begun to use up its reserves, and what will happen to electricity, since the above-average consumption has been recorded in recent days, Vucic said that thanks to the agreement with Hungary, Serbia's gas reserves today were 650 million cubic meters.

He added that a good arrangement was made with Bulgargaz yesterday and that they were moving additional quantities in the direction of Serbia so that we used up reserves less.

"Gas is saving us today. Thanks to the Pannonian power plants TETO Novi Sad and TETO Pancevo, we can survive," Vucic said and noted that this would not be possible if Serbia relied only on coal and hydro potential, Tanjug reported.
He pointed out that Serbia had prepared well, but that the price of gas had gone up four to five times in the last nine days.

"It was 250 euros for a thousand cubic meters of gas, and this morning you couldn’t get it below 1,550," Vucic said.

He added that Serbia used to buy cheaper, but that now Austria and Hungary and other countries would have to start using up reserves and that the price of gas and electricity would rise. Vucic pointed out that Serbia continues to keep the price of electricity and gas extremely low for households and that this was a way to help citizens and companies to stay in the production chain in various areas of the industry.

"For us, energy infrastructure is of crucial importance," Vucic said.