UAE President Lands in Belgrade for Working Visit
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan arrived in Serbia on July 30, with President Aleksandar Vucic waiting for him on the tarmac at Nikola Tesla Airport.
The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, landed in Belgrade on Thursday, July 30, for a working visit to Serbia. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was waiting for him on the tarmac at Nikola Tesla Airport.
The Emirati delegation includes Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Sheikh Mohamed bin Hamad bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, two members of the inner circle of the ruling Al Nahyan family. Before flying to Serbia, the UAE president had been in Bratislava, which makes Belgrade the second stop on this European trip.
Vucic announced the arrival himself, in a post on his Instagram account written in unusually personal language for a head of state.
“It is a special honour for me to host my dear friend Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan once again”
He closed the post with “Welcome to Serbia, my friend!” The phrase “once again” points to something the announcement does not spell out: the two men have hosted each other before.
A working visit, not a state visit
The trip was announced as a working visit, a shorter and far less ceremonial format than a state visit, without the honour guard and the full protocol that comes with the highest rank of official travel. No detailed agenda was published in advance.
The composition of the delegation still says something. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed has been president of the UAE since May 2022, and for years before that, as crown prince of Abu Dhabi, he was the man running his country’s foreign policy. When two senior sheikhs travel with him, the conversation usually runs past protocol.
Why the Emirates are not an ordinary guest in Belgrade
Because a decade of contracts sits behind that handshake on the tarmac, not a string of separate visits.
- Serbia and the UAE signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, known as CEPA, in Abu Dhabi in October 2023. It was the first agreement of its kind the Emirates concluded with a European country, and it entered into force during 2024.
- Belgrade Waterfront, the largest construction project in the Serbian capital, is a joint venture with Abu Dhabi based Eagle Hills and its chairman Mohamed Alabbar. The contract was signed in 2015 and the towers on the Sava riverbank are the most visible Emirati investment in the country.
- Emirati carrier Etihad Airways entered the ownership structure of Serbia’s national airline in 2013, when it was rebranded as Air Serbia.
Alongside those, there is a series of agriculture and defence industry arrangements that rarely end up in photographs. In a relationship built like that, a president walking out to the runway in person is a message aimed at audiences at home and abroad.
A visit during the Middle East crisis
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed arrives in Belgrade while the Middle East is in crisis, and the UAE is one of the actors in that region with the deepest pockets. Serbia has spent years positioning itself as a country that talks to everyone, and that is the expensive part of the policy: every meeting is read in Washington, in Brussels and in the Gulf capitals at the same time.
That is also why the agenda need not be limited to trade. A working visit of this format normally means a specific list of items, and the public usually learns what was on it only afterwards, from a statement or a joint appearance.
What comes next
The first measurable outcome will be the list of documents signed, if any, and the statement the president’s office issues about the topics discussed. Should the visit produce new investment, it will not show up immediately but in decisions on individual projects over the coming months. Until then, the hardest fact is the one from the airport: the UAE president is in Belgrade, and his host came out to meet him in person.
