By Lorena Drakula
Lorena Drakula is a doctoral researcher at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (SCRIPTS) and the Freie Universität in Berlin. She holds an MA in Political Science from the Central European University and an MA in Philosophy and Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Zagreb.
As the EU races to secure lithium for its green transition, Serbia emerges as its key partner, securing economic benefits at a significant environmental and social cost. As Belgrade aligns more closely with Brussels and Berlin, critiques of its democratic backsliding fade, giving rise to a “greener” stabilitocracy.
Recent developments in Serbia have made it painfully clear what binds the EU, authoritarianism, and environmental destruction together: green capitalism. Or, better said: a more intense capitalism which is less green.
Having stopped the licensing process for the multinational corporation Rio Tinto, in relation to lithium mining along Serbia’s Western border, two years ago, the Serbian government has now suddenly restarted the process, with so far unseen enthusiasm from the West. Originally, the process was halted in the face of massive protests held in December 2021 and January 2022, primarily due to the devastating environmental impact of the project, which has been demonstrated in multiple studies and which was already observable in the first stages of lithium exploration.
The revitalized project has been jump-started by the European need for lithium-ion batteries, the foundation of the green transition plans to reduce CO2 emissions in the power supply and transportation sectors. The EU plans to fulfill its goal of banning the sale of carbon-fueled vehicles by 2035 as well as its strategy of diversifying its supplier base of critical raw materials. Serbia’s Jadar valley, which contains a large deposit of boron and lithium-containing ore (jadarite), has become central to this effort. The Jadar project, a large-scale mining operation spearheaded by Rio Tinto, is valued at 2,4 billion EUR, and is supposed to cover around 90% of Europe’s current lithium needs.
For Serbia, the mining operation is projected to generate substantial benefits, including direct and indirect employment, local investments, taxes and royalties, amounting to a 1.9 billion EUR (3%) contribution to the country’s total GDP, as calculated by Rio Tinto itself. Others, however, project that the benefits to Serbia will be significantly less, with some even doubting that the projected mining- and processing-related income can exceed the benefits of current agricultural activities in the region. Nevertheless, hopes for the building of an entire production chain in Serbia are rising, with trial production of electric cars already underway in Kragujevac (and financially supported by the government), alongside Chinese investments in manufacturing car parts, and Rio Tinto’s partner, InoBat from Slovakia, purportedly planning to add a battery factory to the list.
Besides Serbia’s role in the EU’s strategic supply chain for green energy materials, the project seems to imply a further alignment of Serbia with the EU in the geopolitical arena as well.
Serbia is famously one of the only countries in Europe that has not sanctioned Russia after the occupation of parts of Ukraine, and has been one of the hotspots of China’s booming economic influence in Europe. With Europe looking to combat their influence in the neighborhood, securing the lithium ore, conveniently located right outside its borders, offers the EU a way to pull Serbia more firmly to its sphere of influence while simultaneously curbing the reach of Russia and China in the region. With its EU accession process having been stalled, Serbia is arguably also looking to leverage its lithium reserves in order to reaffirm its importance to the EU. After all, the project has been praised for finally showing Europe that they can count on Serbia and that Serbia is here to “solve problems and not cause them”.
It is in this context that the EU and Serbia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on forming a Strategic Partnership regarding sustainable raw materials, battery value chains, and electric vehicles, as well as a Letter of Intent concerning the development of the e-mobility value chain in the Republic of Serbia.
While the project has secured wide international support from Western officials, it has generated significant backlash as well.
The proposed site was home to approximately 20,000 people, many of whom have already been forcibly displaced. The valley also contains a critical reservoir of underground drinking water, now under threat from the extensive extraction of ore in the area. While Rio Tinto and the political elites backing the project assure the public that it will meet the highest environmental standards, site observations paint a different picture.
Rio Tinto’s exploratory drilling has already caused significant environmental damage, with leaking mine water containing high levels of boron contaminating agricultural fields and local water sources. And this is just the beginning. Impact studies suggest the project will devastate local agriculture, lead to job losses, destroy vast tracts of meadows and forests, and endanger around 50 cultural and archeological sites in the area.
Unsurprisingly, this knowledge has ignited widespread protests across Serbia, especially since the political elites in the EU have been reluctant to allow similar projects in their countries – including in Germany, which has higher reserves of lithium that could be extracted more easily.
The protests are about more than environmental concerns; they are a resounding cry against a government that seems to firmly push in the direction of a greenwashed autocracy.
While democratic backsliding in Serbia, which has been deemed a hybrid regime just as long as Hungary, has periodically been critiqued by EU officials, the latest round of disapproval, this time of the manipulation of the December 2023 elections, has faded with the resurgence of the Rio Tinto project. The mining industry and the accompanying benefits, in turn, form the economic basis of President Aleksandar Vučić’s power. The expanding mining industry in Serbia has already been generating record amounts of waste. Despite investments in the protection of the environment or donations to local communities, the living conditions are deteriorating; there is less control over foreign companies; and the SNS-led government and President Vučić are further undermining the rule of law to facilitate such projects.
The strange union of green capitalism and autocratization fulfills the modern neoliberal dream, as state rules and regulations arbitrarily change to serve the interests of capital.
One prominent example was the decision to drop boron from the list of harmful substances after the consequences of their mining left companies unable to meet legal limits in soil and water. The spatial plans changed, the land got turned from “agricultural” to “construction,” and new expropriation laws allowing the confiscation of property in “matters of public interest” were about to be implemented before the project was formally halted due to protests in 2022. While the company continued acquiring land even after its license was revoked, showing the project never actually stopped, its second life is especially worrisome as it has been accompanied by heavy-handed silencing of critiques targeting Vučić’s rule of law violations, electoral manipulations, and state capture.
The possibility to stifle dissent through the well-established tactics of the regime has only been beneficial to the interests of Rio Tinto.
Activists get arrested, protesters are met with violence, and the media is muzzled – all to ensure that the lucrative Jadar project can proceed unchallenged.
This form of stabilitocracy, a regime where a facade of stability is maintained by sacrificing democratic principles on the altar of economic or geopolitical gain, may be far from a new story in the Western Balkans but its deep entrenchment in the green transition exposes an even more troubling alliance.
Sources say the last years saw intense pressure from Western diplomats to bypass formalities, override the protests, and quicken the process. The Constitutional Court’s decision that the Serbian government’s cancellation of the Jadar valley mining project was unconstitutional conveniently came just a few weeks after the patent of the technology for mining jadarite was reportedly approved by the European Patent Office. While so far Vučić’s state capture has been largely tolerated, not least because of his cooperation in the negotiations around Kosovo, this “prestigious” project secures a so far unprecedentedly open support from the West.
Moreover, researcher Aleksandar Matković has received death threats in both Serbian and in German following his publication of an open letter regarding Rio Tinto – just one example of the escalating intimidation of activists which has (at the time of writing) not been addressed by political elites. While Russia and China never claimed to be interested in democracy promotion in the region, it seems that the status of an ally of the EU, or supporter of “European values” can, apparently, be bought by lithium.
The Constitutional Court did not reinstate the license to Rio Tinto, and the company now has to go through the licensing procedure once again, but the future is more than bleak. In proving it is “loyal to Europe,” Serbia is acquiescing to a new form of exploitation, taking on all of the risks in order to secure the benefits for the West.
That means that the protests will not succeed even if Rio Tinto is pushed out of the country, or if the project itself is stopped. They will not be successful if the further alignment of Vučić with Western countries manages to partially mitigate the environmental and democratic concerns in the country.
Even the elusive goal of removing Vučić from power wouldn’t solve the deeper issues at play—the economic dependency of the country, the power dynamics between the center and periphery, and the deep-rooted ties between capitalism, green or otherwise, and its drive to curtail democracy.
In collaboration with Matthew Haji-Michael.
