Serbia on Friday put into effect its interim trade agreement with the European Union, despite an unresolved blockage on the EU side over the Balkan country’s failure to arrest two war crimes suspects.

Customs duties would go down gradually at first, mostly by less than 20 per cent, but would accelerate into free trade over six years, officials said. The interim agreement incorporates the trade articles from the country’s Stabilisation and Association Agreement, the conditional EU pre-accession document signed last April.