15. July 2021.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, Nikola Selaković, began his official visit to Austria with a meeting with the Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs, Margarete Schramböck, with whom he discussed economic cooperation, digitalization of state administration and dual education.

Selaković emphasized that Austria, with two billion 570 million euros invested in the period from 2010 to 2020, is the second largest country investor in the Serbian economy. He especially pointed out the fact that about 900 Austrian companies operate in Serbia, and that they employ about 22,000 of our citizens, as well as that these numbers are growing from year to year.

Also, the Minister said that today's conversation was very important since the representatives of four large companies operating on the Serbian market were also present.

The Minister mentioned the company Magna Seating, which practically intends to concentrate almost all its production from Europe in Serbia.

"We are encouraged by the fact that they did not only talk about hiring a simple workforce, but they said that they would transfer their development sector to Serbia, due to the benefits provided by the Serbian market – the IT sector", Selaković said.

Speaking about trade, the Minister said that in 2020 it amounted to one billion and 70 million euros, which is 14 percent lower than in 2019, but that the growth of our exports of almost 15 percent and imports from Austria of 18 percent show that, during this year, we will manage to make up for what we missed last year.

Selaković pointed out that Minister Schramböck praised the fact that Serbia was the first in the region to introduce informatics as a compulsory subject for primary school children and the fact that this year we had the first generation of 67,000 primary school graduates who went through such an education system.

Also, the ministers discussed dual education, and Minister Selaković informed the Austrian minister about the fact that this year the introduction of dual education at the university level will begin in Serbia.

The Minister said that the possibility of cooperation in the digitalization of the state administration was also discussed at the meeting, and stated that this year, Austria is entering the program of making driver's licenses which will be integrated into mobile phones.