Vucic: We have joined Global Battery Alliance to prepare for future

HAMBURG - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday Serbia had joined the Global Battery Alliance (GBA) in Hamburg earlier in the day to prepare for the future in a timely manner.

At a Hamburg Sustainability Conference panel on a new alliance for a responsible circular battery supply chain, Vucic presented the accession letter of the Serbian Ministry of Economy to GBA Director Inga Petersen.

"We are pleased that we submitted our ministry's materials today and joined the GBA, and we are pleased with the discussions with German Minister of Economic Development Svenja Schulze. We will keep working and I find it important that today we highlighted that, in case all environmental protection measures and health safety are guaranteed, Serbia does not expect the key focus to be on mining but on the entire value chain, which means a great advantage and great benefits for our citizens," Vucic told reporters after the panel, noting that he was referring to a cathode factory, a battery plant and an electric vehicle factory.

"I know well what kind of problems we will be facing and how big they are, and that is why we need to look to the future and into how to solve electricity problems, and how to build, and secure funding for, modular nuclear reactors, how to guarantee the existence of electric vehicles in our country and the use of artificial intelligence, because that literally eats up more electricity than we can produce," Vucic said.