Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic estimated on June 23 that Serbia will need less time than Croatia, for admission negotiations with the European Union.

Speaking at a gathering in Belgrade about the use of pre-accession funds of the EU, Djelic said that, because of the crisis, there is currently no political will for faster admission to the EU, but that this did not mean it would be so in the future.

Djelic said that, in the 11 years in which Serbia has been using the EU pre-accession funds, in the amount of EUR2.5 billion, there was no case of corruption in connection with these funds.

He said that more should be done on the transparency of managing EU-financed projects, adding that, of the money the EU had designated for Serbia, it has used 99.6 percent, which is a high percentage.

The deputy chief of the EU delegation in Serbia, Adriano Martins, stressed that Serbia has used more EU funds than the other countries of the Western Balkans.

He said that the principle problem was the fact that projects are poorly prepared and that the projects of local administration bodies are often just a shadow of what they should look like.