Serbia

Serbia is a nation in Central and Southeast Europe that is formally known as the Republic of Serbia. A landlocked country in Southeast Europe, it shares borders with Hungary to the north and Romania to the northeast. It also shares borders with North Macedonia to the south, Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the east, Serbia to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest. Serbia has a population of almost 7 million people, with Belgrade serving as both the country's capital and biggest city.

Since the Paleolithic Era, the territory of modern-day Serbia has been continuously inhabited. Slavic migrations began in the 6th century, resulting in the establishment of several regional states in the early Middle Ages that were at times recognised as tributaries to the Byzantine, Frankish, and Hungarian kingdoms at various times. The Serbian Kingdom was recognised by the Holy See and the city of Constantinople in 1217, and reached its geographical pinnacle in 1346 when it became known as the Serbian Empire. At some point between 1517 and 1520, the Ottoman Empire conquered and absorbed the whole of modern-day Serbia; their reign was sometimes interrupted by the Habsburg Empire, which started moving into Central Serbia at the end of the 17th century while keeping a footing in Vojvodina. The Serbian Revolution, which took place in the early nineteenth century, founded the nation-state as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which later extended its territory. Upon the conclusion of World War I and the subsequent merger of the former Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina with Serbia, the country joined forces with other South Slavic countries to establish Yugoslavia, which would exist in different political configurations until the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. While Yugoslavia was dissolving, Serbia and Montenegro created a union that was amicably terminated in 2006, restoring Serbia's independence as a sovereign state for the first time since 1918. When the Assembly of Kosovo unilaterally proclaimed independence in 2008, the international world responded with mixed feelings, and Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory.

Serbia is an upper-middle-income economy that is placed 64th in the Human Development Index area and is rated as "very high." It is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic that is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Partnership for Peace, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, the CEFTA, the AIIB, and is in the process of becoming a member of the World Trade Organization. Since 2014, the nation has been in the process of negotiating its EU membership, with the goal of becoming a member of the EU by 2025. As on January 1, 2014, Serbia has legally adopted a policy of military neutrality. The nation offers universal health coverage as well as free basic and secondary education to all of its inhabitants.