In July 2019, Serbia announced that the Belgrade metro would be built by French companies and the Chinese state-owned company China’s Power Construction Corporation (Powerchina). Since 2014, the project had been discussed and studies carried out in cooperation with the French company Alstom. Two French companies, Powerchina, and members of the Serbian government entered negotiations on the contracts, but the final deal was kept from the public. When Transparency Serbia, the Serbian branch of an NGO that fights corruption, asked for details from the government, the deal was protected as a business secret at the request of Powerchina. Transparency Serbia has accused the deal of being shaped around the needs of the companies involved rather than the needs of the people of Belgrade and of breaking the Law on Public Procurements and the Public-Private Partnership Law. While 80 million euros will be borrowed from France to fund the project, the budget classifies the remaining 500 million as “project loans with foreign investment corporations, funds and banks.”