in the
Château de Chenonceau , the first Minister of Defence of Serbia The oldest documented contact between the two sides was the marriage of
Stephen Uroš I of Serbia and
Helen of Anjou. The first important contacts of
French and
Serbs came only in the 19th century when French travel writers first wrote about Serbia. In the 19th century,
Karađorđe Petrović, leader of
Serbian Revolution, sent a letter to
Napoleon expressing his admiration, while in the
French parliament,
Victor Hugo made a speech asking France to assist Serbia and to protect the Serbian population from
Ottoman crimes. Rapid development of bilateral relations followed, so that the people in Serbia saw a great new friend in "mighty France", that could protect them from the
Ottomans and
Habsburgs. French was the second language in schools during the whole interwar period, and it was studied as the second language in
Kingdom of Serbia. Also, a number of notable Serb painters were educated and worked in France, mostly Paris. French influence was visible in the literary production which drew on French models. This influence was explained with "strong spiritual similarity between the French and Serbian mentalities and the French and Serbian languages" and it had a fundamental role in creation of the "Belgrade style". Relations between two countries continued to improve until the
World War I, when the "common struggle" against a common enemy reached its peak. Before the war France won the sympathy of the Serbian population by building railways, opening French schools, a Consulate and a French Bank. Several Serbian kings from this period studied at universities in
Paris, as well as large part of the future diplomats. Some French travelers wrote in the Interwar period that "Serbia is the most Francophile country in the world". in
Belgrade's central
Kalemegdan Park In 1964
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and France signed six-year bilateral trade agreement which provided Yugoslavia with the same trading conditions France was providing for the
OECD member countries contributing to further development of
Yugoslav relations with the European Economic Community. France participated in the
1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which resulted in a
UN administration of Kosovo and then to eventual independence in which Serbia does not recognise. When Kosovo
declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, France became one of the first countries to recognize its independence. A
leaked diplomatic cable suggested that France had made it clear that Serbia could not enter the EU without recognizing Kosovo's independence. ==Political relations==