BELGRADE, October 3. /TASS/. Serbia wants to become a full-fledged member of the European Union as soon as possible, First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Sinisa Mali said.

"Serbia is a candidate for membership. We are not yet a full-fledged EU member but are faced with about the same challenges because the European Union is our major trade partner. And everything we are doing we are doing with an aim to become a EU member as soon as possible," the Tanjug agency quoted him as saying at the GLOBSEC Tatra 2025 summit.

According to Mali, the European Union has no clear strategy on sources of cheap energy in the future. "Frankly speaking, from Serbia’s point of view, I don’t see any clear scenario of where the European Union is heading to. Germany has just commissioned six gigawatts of coal facilities, France - one, and Greece - one more. We in this continent have been talking about the green economy, climate change, and so on. But the demand for clean and cheap energy outweighs all other ideas," he stressed.

Official candidates for EU membership are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Montenegro. Brussels is exerting pressure on Serbia to accept granting this status to the unrecognized republic of Kosovo, which would actually mean the official recognition of its independence.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said earlier that the public support for the idea of the country’s EU membership had halved in the past two decades, from 80% to 40%, due mainly to the domestic factors.