Southern and Eastern Serbia


The Southern and Eastern Serbia is one of five statistical regions of Serbia. It is also a Level-2 statistical region according to the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics.

History

In 2009, the National Assembly adopted a law which divided Serbia into seven statistical regions. At first, it was decided that in the territory of current statistical region of Southern and Eastern Serbia there would be two statistical regions – Eastern Region and Southern Region. However, in 2010, the law was changed, thus the Eastern and Southern regions were merged into a single statistical region named Southern and Eastern Serbia.

Administrative districts

The statistical region of Southern and Eastern Serbia encompasses 9 administrative districts:
DistrictArea Population Seat
Podunavlje1,250175,573Smederevo
Braničevo3,865156,367Požarevac
Bor3,510101,100Bor
Zaječar3,62396,715Zaječar
Nišava2,727343,950Niš
Pirot2,76176,700Pirot
Toplica2,22977,341Prokuplje
Jablanica2,770184,502Leskovac
Pčinja3,520193,802Vranje

Demographics

The region is heavily affected by depopulation. Most critical situation is in municipalities of Gadžin Han, Crna Trava, Ražanj, Trgovište, Dimitrovgrad, and Bosilegrad. A stark example of depopulation is Crna Trava, which used to have 13,614 inhabitants in 1948, while in 2022 only 1,063 people were registered.

Cities and towns

The following list include cities and towns with over 20,000 inhabitants.
City or townPopulation
Niš182,797
Smederevo59,261
Leskovac58,338
Vranje50,954
Požarevac42,530
Pirot34,942
Zaječar32,448
Bor28,822
Prokuplje24,627
Smederevska Palanka20,345

Ethnic structure

EthnicityPopulation Share
Serbs1,173,09283.4%
Albanians58,1454.1%
Roma50,6713.6%
Vlachs19,5691.4%
Bulgarians10,5540.7%
Undeclared20,4951.4%
Unknown59,7254.2%