Radar Website: Serbia Mysteriously Pays EUR200 Million More for French Rafales

Sinisa Mali (BETAPHOTO/AMIR HAMZAGIC)

Despite paying a second advance payment of 15 percent back in April,  the Serbian state paid an additional EUR204.6 million in cash to the French Dassault company for 12 fighters jets at the end of 2025 and is due to pay EUR480 million more by the end of January, the Radar website reported on Jan. 22  adding that the payment was not part of the 2025 budget.

For now there has been no official explanation of why Serbia practically paid a portion of the third installment which is due this year as part of the deal which was arranged by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic during a visit to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.

The first RSD48.6 billion (EUR417 million) installment was paid on Oct. 20, 2024 and on April 10, 2025 Finance Minister Sinisa Mali boasted on his Instagram account that Serbia had disbursed the second installment of the advance payment (EUR411.75 million) "15 days before it was due." The minister said that the installment covered "the entire advance payment of 30 percent of the cost of purchasing the Rafales." Therefore it remains unclear why the state paid an additional EUR204.6 million in December 2025.

Stranger still is the fact that neither "supreme commander" Aleksandar Vucic nor Minister Mali or Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic have boasted about the payment and are staying silent, possibly in the hope that the public will not learn of it or because they believe that the it is not likely to accept the news with enthusiasm. Especially the citizens of rural areas that have been without electricity and water for days, Radar said, adding that Serbia had secured as much as 70 percent of the money for paying for the French planes (which cost a total EUR2.75 billion), by borrowing EUR1.92 billion from several French banks and financial institutions.