The presence of lithium in the Jadar River area in Western Serbia is somewhat like the proverbial elephant in the room – everyone is aware of its existence, but few act as if it exists. At least since the beginning of 2022 when the Serbian government halted the 2.4 billion euro project “Jadar” led by the Anglo-Australian corporation Rio Tinto. This decision followed massive environmental protests that spilled over from the end of 2021 into the beginning of the next year. The immediate triggers were amendments to the Law on Expropriation and the Law on Referendum, but the real cause was dissatisfaction with the lack of transparency with which the “Jadar” project had been initiated. From unclear paperwork to equally unclear assessments of the project’s impact on the environment, the list of criticisms and concerns was lengthy.
Since then, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has, on several occasions, referred to the abandonment of the “Jadar” project, which was estimated to bring in 1.5 billion euros annually to Serbia by the end of 2021, as his biggest mistake. Former Minister of Construction, Transport, and Infrastructure, Tomislav Momirović, excelled in comparing lithium excavation to the advent of the Internet, but he shifted the responsibility for missing this development opportunity onto the shoulders of the government. According to his opinion, Vučić’s responsibility was deemed to be the least significant.
The old government didn’t listen to the president; will the president listen to the new one?
The grain of responsibility, the president carefully preserved over the past two years, occasionally mentioning “Jadar” as an untapped springboard for Serbia, used his “leap into the future” in the form of a wish list called “Serbia 2027” to revitalize the lithium dream – or nightmare, depending on who you ask. To be honest, almost timidly – not to cater to ignoramuses, he said, the previous government did not accept his initiative to proceed with the project, and the new one will have to make a decision, of course, equally independently of his opinion. Let the future ministers reflect a bit, as well as the opponents of the project, on whether anyone will remain to live in the critical area that some already see as barren land – not in the case of ore exploitation, but if the financial injection it represents is not administered. Vučić will certainly not talk about it during the presentation. It’s a bit strange that the “invention of the Internet” is not an integral part of the “leap into the future,” but fine, there you go, the elephant may not be visible, but the trunk is at least there.
To be fair, this Vučić’s “leap” also had a shorter run-up – on January 17, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the president said he had a “difficult conversation” with representatives of Rio Tinto, with whom, despite the implicit public discussions, Serbia wants to continue negotiating. He expressed concerns about a potential lawsuit against Serbia and “asked them not to take measures to protect their interests.” The elephant seems a bit upset that no one is acknowledging it, it seems, but is there even a basis for it to be upset?
The answer was somewhat provided by Miladin Kovačević, the director of the Republic Statistical Office, who warned that a “contract termination” would mean at least half a billion euros in damage to Serbia. However, didn’t the former pillar of the Serbian Progressive Party and former Minister of Mining and Energy, Zorana Mihajlović, as well as the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, claim multiple times that the current authorities had not signed any contract? “There is indeed no contract,” said the Prime Minister, but there is a research permit issued exactly twenty years ago, subsequently extended. The legislation on mining at that time stipulated that obtaining exploration rights automatically implied obtaining exploitation rights. If Rio Tinto does not voluntarily relinquish them, Brnabić said, they will have grounds to sue Serbia, while also criticizing the “previous government” for putting the country in an awkward position.
The Prime Minister did not explain how the “previous government” led Serbia astray if the “Jadar” project itself is a phenomenal development opportunity, but not everything has to be explicitly clarified. The fact that something resembles a mistake does not necessarily mean it is a mistake.
However, some things are clear, suggested the Prime Minister, and among them is the determination of the company “Rio Tinto” to stay in Serbia, which should be attributed to the fact that it legally purchased extensive property in the Jadar River valley. In response to the question that naturally arises – and has been posed in the last two years by many others, including the “Environmental Uprising,” “People’s Initiative,” and “Go Change” – why would a company that doesn’t plan to operate in a location buy land in that location, the Prime Minister answered, albeit indirectly: the lithium mining project “was not stopped, just put on hold.”
So what was previously definitively described as a “period” on “Jadar” has morphed into a comma or, at best, a period with a comma. The project itself is excellent for Serbia, said the Prime Minister, but foreigners stirred up a frenzy by financing environmental protests against it. Are they the same ones who have meanwhile strongly lobbied for the realization of the “Jadar” project so that the European Union could meet its critical raw material needs? Probably not, but even if they are the same, it’s because they wanted “both the goat and the cabbage,” to “break the backbone” of President Vučić, who realized how good the “Jadar” project is for Serbia. Wait, folks, is that a trunk or…?
“I’ll quote the Prime Minister – I have to understand how to understand. So, Western countries behind Rio Tinto funded protests against Rio Tinto, even though their project is in their interest, just to weaken Vučić because they knew he would support the project because it’s so good for Serbia,” tried to summarize Savo Manojlović, Campaign Director of the “Go Change” Movement and one of the organizers of the protests that silenced the “Jadar” project two years ago.
It is possible to resist the project, but not if you conduct election fraud
Indeed, the lithium excavation project, like few other affairs in the socio-political reality of Serbia, has managed to lead government representatives into logical errors in public. Contradictions are among the most frequent. One question that no one has received an answer to is: why was the honor of preparing the Environmental Impact Assessment Study given to the investor and not to the institutions of the Republic of Serbia? Or: why did the offices of the former Minister of Mining and Energy Zorana Mihajlović, Prime Minister Brnabić, and Minister of Environmental Protection Irena Vujović respond to the letter from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) listing concerns about lithium mining with a text that “Rio Tinto” had previously addressed to the government? Or: why did the Ministry of Mining and Energy, until April of last year, extend the deadline for supplementing the documentation eleven times to eventually grant approval for the exploitation field to “Rio Tinto”? And so on.
Before the “Leap into the Future,” Manojlović hinted that President Vučić would announce the start of lithium excavation. The Serbian public didn’t hear those exact words in the end, but it seemed as if they did.
“Since the project was blocked in 2022, we have been constantly warning that the battle has been won, but the war for public opinion continues. We participate in it through actions, media campaigns, environmental education, and government activities are also visible because before every election, as well as during the ‘Serbia Against Violence’ protests, they said they were not for that project, how it was brought by their evil predecessors, and how they saved Serbia. After the elections, a different tune starts, and the president shows courage and praises the project,” says Manojlović to NIN.
In Portugal, our interlocutor reminds, there was also a lithium euphoria, which turned out to be “lithium corruption” that led to the arrest of several members of the prime minister’s cabinet. The prime minister, in turn, resigned, leading to the fall of the government.
“Lithium is not mined anywhere in the EU, even though it has been used for a long time. It is mined in other parts of the world, often in areas where life does not exist within hundreds of kilometers around the deposit. The capacity to resist the interests of big capital depends on the integrity you have as a government. If you engage in election fraud or promote scandals like ‘Jovanjica,’ you have no integrity and credibility. In such circumstances, every international support will cost you. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the authorities are currently pushing a project for which they will get the lowest mining royalty in Europe, and that while the price of lithium is plummeting, albeit after a period of growth,” explains Manojlović and reminds that, contrary to the assurances of the prime minister and others in the state and party leadership, there is no country that will become one of the most developed by using primary resources.
Indeed, it is enough to look at the World Bank data, where among the exporters of primary resources are Libya and Iraq, which have gone through destructive civil wars, Congo, and even Papua New Guinea, where, according to our interlocutor, “Rio Tinto” had an influence on the civil war at the end of the last century. There won’t be conflicts of that type here – we hope – but…
“Let it be what cannot be, let the struggle be incessant. We have captured institutions; the state and the investor have an abundance of resources, but no one is stronger than citizens with a clear plan and demands, as the first protests have shown. I must say, whatever the people in power defended, led by the president of the country, did not succeed. Where they protected the interests of Serbs in the 1990s, there are no more Serbs. Perhaps they missed the most favorable period of international politics, but they put Serbs in Kosovo in an even more unfavorable situation. In that sense, it’s a good thing that they are defending the interests of Rio Tinto, not the citizens of Serbia,” concludes Manojlović.
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