| Verified against primary record | |
| Position under EU law | Not a member state; Directive 2011/24/EU does not apply[4] |
|---|---|
| Presence in EU cross-border data | None; the Commission’s collection covers EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway[2] |
| Responsible body | Republic Fund of Health Insurance, Belgrade[1] |
| Basis of access for foreign visitors | Bilateral health insurance agreements, the European Health Insurance Card for nine EU states, or payment[1] |
| Scope of entitlement | Urgent care; chronic patients such as those needing dialysis or insulin require special certificates[1] |
| Independently reported | |
| EU patients using the Directive each year | About 200,000, in a system Serbia is not part of[3] |
| Bands apply only to the rows beneath them. The entitlements described cover urgent care for visitors, which is not medical travel undertaken to obtain treatment. No official Serbian count of foreign patients treated for elective care was located, and no Serbian figures appear in any European cross-border collection because Serbia is outside their scope. No typical cost range is given because no official Serbian source publishes prices paid by foreign patients. | |
Medical tourism in Serbia cannot be measured from the European sources that cover its neighbours, because Serbia is not an EU member state and appears in none of the Union’s cross-border healthcare collections. What the official Serbian record does describe is how foreign visitors obtain care: through a network of bilateral health insurance agreements, through acceptance of the European Health Insurance Card from a defined list of countries, or by paying.
Outside the European collections
Directive 2011/24/EU imposes duties on member states, requiring the member state of affiliation to reimburse cross-border care where the treatment is among the benefits it covers domestically and confining prior authorisation to three defined grounds. Serbia, not being a member state, is not subject to it.[4]
The Commission’s annual data collection under the Directive extends to the EU member states together with Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, and to Switzerland for the purposes of the coordination Regulations. Serbia does not appear anywhere in it. Any comparison of Serbia with its EU neighbours on these measures is therefore impossible rather than merely difficult.[2]
How foreign visitors obtain care
The Republic Fund of Health Insurance, based in Belgrade, publishes guidance on care for foreign citizens. Foreign nationals on temporary stay in Serbia, and Serbian citizens living or working abroad, are entitled to receive urgent medical care.[1]
Three routes are set out. Citizens of countries holding a health insurance agreement with Serbia present a certificate issued at home, with prescribed forms used for Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Romania, Tunisia and Turkey. The European Health Insurance Card is accepted for Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia and Czechia. Visitors from Poland and Great Britain use an insurance certificate issued in their home country.[1]
Where documents are missing, urgent care is still provided and the home insurer’s certificate is requested afterwards. Visitors from countries without an agreement pay for urgent services received during their stay and may then seek reimbursement from their own insurer.[1]
The guidance covers urgent care only, with one exception: chronic or acute patients, such as those requiring dialysis or insulin, need special certificates to receive necessary services free of charge. It does not state whether other planned care is covered for foreign visitors.[1]
What this does and does not tell us
The distinction between urgent care for visitors and travel undertaken in order to obtain treatment is the whole of the matter here. A patchwork of bilateral agreements and card acceptance describes how someone who falls ill in Serbia is treated. It says nothing about a patient who chooses Serbia for a procedure, which is what medical tourism normally means.
Serbia is promoted commercially as a destination for dental treatment, cosmetic surgery and fertility services, with a private sector serving patients from the region and from the Serbian diaspora. No official Serbian figure quantifying that activity was located for this article, and none has been estimated.
For scale in the surrounding region, the European Court of Auditors estimated that about 200,000 patients a year use the EU Directive, fewer than 0.05 per cent of EU citizens, with spending at roughly 0.004 per cent of the Union’s healthcare budget. Those figures describe the system Serbia sits outside, and are included only as context.[3]
Limits of the evidence
This entry contains no Serbian patient or revenue figure, because none was located in any official Serbian source. The health fund page consulted carries no date, and the lists of agreement countries and card-accepting countries should be checked before being relied on. The page does not describe the fund’s wider statutory role, so no account of the Serbian health insurance system beyond foreign visitors’ entitlements is given here.
See also
- Emergency healthcare abroad, the category the Serbian entitlements actually cover
- Medical tourism in Switzerland, the other non-member state in this series
- Diaspora medical travel, a commonly cited driver of travel to the region
- Dental tourism, among the privately funded services Serbia is promoted for
- Cross-border healthcare, and the frameworks Serbia is not party to
References
- Republic Fund of Health Insurance, Serbia. Providing Urgent Medical Care to foreign citizens. Verified against primary record: the page was opened and the identification of the fund and its Belgrade address, the entitlement of foreign nationals on temporary stay and of Serbian citizens abroad to urgent care, the list of countries using prescribed bilateral agreement forms, the list of countries whose European Health Insurance Card is accepted, the separate treatment of Poland and Great Britain, the handling of missing documents, the payment rule for countries without an agreement, and the special certificates for chronic patients were read directly. The page carries no date. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety. Data on cross-border patient healthcare following Directive 2011/24/EU, reference year 2023. 15 May 2025. Verified against primary record: the report was opened and its scope, covering the EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway and, for the coordination Regulations, Switzerland, was read, together with confirmation that Serbia does not appear in it. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- European Court of Auditors. Special Report 07/2019: EU actions for cross-border healthcare. 2019. Verified against primary record: the report was opened and the annual patient estimate, the share of citizens and the share of healthcare spending were read. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
- European Parliament and Council. Directive 2011/24/EU, Chapter III, Articles 7 and 8. 9 March 2011. Verified against primary record: the chapter text was opened and the reimbursement rule in Article 7, its addressing of member states, and the three permitted grounds for prior authorisation in Article 8(2) were read. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
Sourcing note: this entry contains no Serbian patient or revenue figure because none was located in any official Serbian source, and none has been estimated or taken from commercial material. The entitlements described are for urgent care given to visitors and are expressly distinguished from travel undertaken to obtain treatment, so they are not presented as a measure of medical tourism. Serbia’s absence from the European collections is stated as a matter of their scope rather than as missing data.