Serbia, Macedonia sign seven cooperation agreements

SKOPJE - The governments of Macedonia and Serbia held a joint meeting in Skopje on Monday, discussing ways to improve cooperation between the two countries, focusing primarily on the economy, after which they signed seven bilateral agreements on cooperation.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic told a press conference afterwards that the second joint meeting of the two governments had been much more successful than the first one in Belgrade in 2013.

"Not only have we ended up with the seven agreements, but we also got a lot of projects to bring to completion, some of them this year and some in 2016. We managed to find common interests in all spheres of society," said Vucic.

Vucic said that the meeting discussed ways to complete the Corridor 10 construction by September 2016, the construction of 400-kV power line between Nis and Stip, which he said could be opened in December of the current year, the construction of a gas inter-connection between Vranje and Kumanovo, and building railroads to Greece.

We also talked about opening joint diplomatic and consular missions in some countries and about joint procurement of vaccines, Vucic said.

Commenting on the Macedonian government's efforts to implement reforms in the country, Vucic said that the Serbian government highly respected the work of their colleagues in Macedonia.
"We have a lot to learn from our Macedonian friends," Vucic said.
Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that the visit by the Serbian delegation was proof of a high level of relations between the two countries, which he said was a good basis for economic cooperation and prosperity aspired to by both Macedonia and Serbia.

One of the topics discussed was European integration, and...