But Jurij Bajec, an economic adviser to the Serbian prime minister, says that several indicators in the past few weeks are making him a little less worried than he was two months ago.
Russia's natural resources minister Jurij Trutnev, meanwhile, has been making optimistic noises in recent weeks about the likelihood of a resolution of a long-standing border dispute between the two nations over a 155, 000 square kilometres "grey area" in the Barents Sea.