Opposition: It's  Not True that Serbia Allocates EUR600 Million to Kosovo Serbs Yearly

Sanda Raskovic Ivic (Photo: Beta / Milos Miskov)

A vice-president of the People's Party, Sanda Raskovic Ivic, also a former president of the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija, contested on March 8 the words of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who had said that Serbia's annual budget allocation for the Serbs of Kosovo had reached EUR600 million.

Raskovic-Ivic said to a BETA reporter that Vucic liked to "toy with numbers" when money's coming from the state's coffers, and that the latest figure was to "disgust" the citizens of Serbia, steering them away from the struggle to keep Kosovo and Metohija.

"Vucic has shared this scary number at a March 6 press conference, to convince the citizens of Serbia that Kosovo is a heavy burden, swallowing money like some bottomless pit. If Serbia had ever set aside that kind of money for the Serbs in Kosovo they would have lived incomparably better lives," the opposition politician said.

If the Serbs in Kosovo had received three billion euros over the past five years, as President Vucic claims, they would have enjoyed the highest standard of living in Europe, and would have never left their homes in Kosovo.