This cost for the citizens of Serbia, but also for the citizens of the other members of the CEFTA agreement, should be abolished, Zdravko Ilic, an expert on trade in services at the CEFTA Secretariat in Brussels, tells Kurir.

Serbia used its role as chairman of CEFTA, which consists of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldova and Montenegro, and when this proposal is adopted, it will be a great success for the Serbian presidency.
The possession of a green insurance card is now mandatory upon entry to the territory of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Tunisia and Morocco.

Our plan is in the next two years to remove the administrative cost for the green card in the region, which all our citizens have when entering, for example, Macedonia. Even though they have already paid insurance for their vehicle, they still have to shell out a certain amount. In doing so, you do not pay any insurance, but you receive a confirmation that you have insurance, Ilic points out.

Ilic explains that, if you travel for example to Iceland through Hungary, no one will ask you for a green card, but if you want to go to sea in Greece, you cannot pass through Macedonia without this document: We made a plan and put it on the table. We hope it will be adopted. We gave a deadline of two years, but I think it could happen earlier. In principle, everything has been agreed, and everything should be officially confirmed at the upcoming ministerial meeting in December. It all started in Sofia in 2020, and the abolition of the green card was not a proposal of the Secretariat, but of one of the governments of the CEFTA member states.

We have further analyzed the situation and discussed with the European Motor Insurance Association how this problem can be solved. In Serbia it is part of the registration, but it is not like that in all countries. There are countries where a registered vehicle does not automatically mean insured. Their system simply doesn’t work that way, says Ilic.

The proposal, he claims, was agreed upon in the form of a recommendation by the CEFTA Joint Committee.