President Boris Tadic said on Dec. 14 that Serbia would enter the European Union between 2016 and 2020.

At a conference on the country's less developed regions, he said that 2016 would be "the best possible result, a record to break all records, with respect to other countries, while 2020 would be a unremarkable result."

"If we were to join [the EU] in 2020, our journey would have been equivalent to a train traveling at 70 kilometers per hour, but what we want is for that train to travel at between 120 and 160 kilometers [per hour]," he said.

Tadic said that the pace of EU accession depended "on us alone, that is up to our economic policy," infrastructure investment and the fight against organized crime.

He underlined his expectation that Serbia would begin EU accession talks in 2012 and added that Serbia needed strong and clearly defined reforms.

The president also said that it was realistic for Serbia to have stable economic growth from 2012 to 2013 if the government's economic measures continued and misguided pressure to increase wages resisted.