"Regarding the recommendations proposed by the Ministry, according to the first estimates, the local self-government units, public sector, public administration, will achieve the savings planned, however we will have a more coherent data in November once we have seen how much households have managed to reduce their consumption. It is important to change our attitude towards electricity, to work on energy culture. Unlike some European countries that sanction excessive consumption of electricity, we have decided to reward citizens who achieve savings in consumption with additional discounts. If we achieve savings of 15 percent, there will be no need to import electricity throughout the winter, Ilic said.

He stated that investments in new power capacities, primarily those that use renewable sources for power generation, are necessary in order for Serbia to be energy secure in the coming years and decades. 

"As the Deputy Prime Minister said, there is an ongoing world energy war and if we are not energy secure, national security is also at risk. We have been insisting for two years on the construction of new power capacities, new PSHPPs, solar and wind power plants so that we would not be dependent in that sector, like we are import dependent in regards to gas. These new capacities will provide us with long-term stability and security," he said.

Speaking about the gas infrastructure, Kojcic said that the construction of the Nis-Dimitrovgrad interconnection is the most important project that will enable Serbia to be supplied by gas from the Caspian region or from the LNG terminal in Greece.

"Thus, we are raising the level of energy security and safety, just as we will be more stable with every future interconnection. The Ministry plans interconnections with North Macedonia, Croatia, Romania, and Albania. The new package of EU sanctions bans the import of Russian oil via JANAF, which will not affect the market in Serbia, because NIS, as the only importer, has already imported other types of crude oil also. At one point, Russian oil was less expensive, so the percentage of that oil in the overall supply was higher. This is nothing new for us and we have known about this scenario since May. The most important thing is that the security of crude oil supply to the domestic refinery is not threatened. This means that the stability of the supply of petroleum products is not threatened either," he said. 
Speaking about the construction of new oil pipelines and connections with Hungary, Albania and Greece via North Macedonia, Kojcic noted that this would make Serbia a transit country.