GORNJE NEDELJICE, Serbia -- A Serbian government decision to resume preparations for a massive lithium mine to feed a growing global market for rechargeable batteries has ignited fresh grassroots opposition two years after the foreign-backed project was put on hold amid nationwide anger.
Last month, Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic's government quickly seized on a Constitutional Court ruling and fresh impetus from Brussels on battery-supply chains to reinstate the plan for the multibillion-dollar mine in the Jadar Valley, western Serbia.
But residents in the communities affected by the planned mine have erupted in protest since the government began its new push to shepherd the Anglo-Australian mine operator Rio Tinto's project through to completion by 2028.
Under the original plan, approximately 50 households in the western Serbian village of Gornje Nedeljice and two additional localities -- Slatina and Brezjak -- with a combined population of approximately 1,000 individuals, were to be relocated due to the mine's construction. Rio Tinto had said the residents would be compensated for leaving their homes.
Protests Round Two
The recent government decision has reignited the opposition from residents who have already rejected compensation and from municipalities that banded together with residents, two years ago, to actively oppose any mining project. There are still long-running concerns about the potential environmental impact of the mine in one of the most polluted corners of Europe and Serbian lawmakers' push, three years ago, to make it easier to force people off of land "in the public interest."
"It just flared up all of a sudden," Ivan Bjelic, a veteran activist who helped organize street blockades last year over perceived electoral injustice, says of the public outbursts.
There were demonstrations last week in the towns of Arilje, Bogatic, Koceljeva, Krupanje, Negotin, and Valjevo as locals mobilized quickly via telephone and social media. More protests followed in Arandjelovac, Kosjeric, Kraljevo, Ljig, Mladenovac, and Sabac.
Bjelic insists the "spontaneous and self-organized" demonstrations can prove more effective than partisan attacks led by the country's notoriously fractious organized opposition.
Some might question whether the local protests have been spontaneous, since many of the groups that mobilized to oppose the Rio Tinto project two years ago remain active and repeatedly warned that the multinational had "never left" and the government was likely to return to the project.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and governments led by his long-ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) have consistently pushed for the Rio Tinto project to kick-start foreign investment, claiming it will bring well-paid jobs to the EU candidate country's sluggish economy.
Rio Tinto has consistently pledged that the combined $2.5 billion complex with underground mine, processing plant, and storage for mineral waste will provide 1,300 jobs and be safe for the environment.
"The company can claim with certainty that life in the Jadar Valley can continue unhindered alongside underground mining and ore processing," the company has told RFE/RL's Balkan Service.
Most opposition parties oppose the mine, but Belgrade-based political analyst Cvijetin Milivojevic says those same parties have also failed to introduce a citizens' petition against the lithium project into the National Assembly, Serbia's unicameral parliament, in any meaningful way.
"People who live in locations that are potential sites of exploitation have the most right to lead protests," Milivojevic says. "Those people are a greater danger to this government than the opposition."
The demands from opposition parties in the National Assembly have varied, with some seeking a special session to debate lithium mining and a possible ban, while others have encouraged public protests, a rebellion, or a referendum.
Opposition Urged To Back Off
Ana Brnabic, the then-prime minister and an SNS ally of Vucic, revoked Rio Tinto's permits in 2022 amid pushback from environmentalists and municipalities resisting buyouts of local property, saying, "We have listened to the people." Public anger had boiled over months earlier over an ultimately abortive attempt to quietly amend Serbian legislation to make it easier to appropriate land "in the public interest."
After Serbia's Constitutional Court declared last month that the postponement and rescindment of permits were illegal, Brnabic, who is now speaker of parliament, said she'd "obviously" been wrong. She has since announced the creation of a parliamentary commission on the Jadar project, but she has also urged the opposition to "drop" its resistance to it.
That seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Aleksandar Jovanovic, known by his nickname Cuta, is a lawmaker for the Ecological Uprising party that was born during the 2021-22 protests against the Jadar project. Last week, he said he was "ready for rebellion and uprising" and announced a "military, technical, and strategic" defense plan to protect residents of Gornje Nedeljice from displacement and to keep Rio Tinto or its allies out.
"When they arrive," he told the NIN weekly, "we will defend ourselves physically, logistically, and tactically -- as any fight against an enemy deserves."
Lithium, dubbed "white gold" for its worth and silvery appearance, is a key metal for use in rechargeable batteries for electric cars (EVs), smartphones, and laptop computers.
The European Union, candidate country Serbia's biggest trading partner, has made boosting battery production and lithium supplies on the continent a priority to reduce dependence on China.
Brussels and Belgrade on July 19 signed a memorandum of understanding on "a strategic partnership on sustainable raw materials, battery value chains, and electric vehicles" days after the Constitutional Court's decision, exacerbating fears that locals were being sold out for foreign interests.
Rio Tinto has claimed that the Jadar project could supply about 58,000 tons of lithium a year -- enough to equip some 15-20 percent of Europe's EV production.
But the right-leaning, euroskeptic Serbian media group NSPM recently published a poll suggesting that more than half of Serbians still oppose the Rio Tinto project.
"I've never been a member of any political party, nor am I motivated to topple anyone from power, but only to stop this project and have everything reexamined once more," Snezana Jurisic, a protester in Bogatic, about 50 kilometers from the planned site, told RFE/RL.
She says she can't recall the last major demonstration in Bogatic. But she and an estimated 1,000 others attended a protest there on July 27 to demand a stop to the Jadar project.
Jurisic is convinced that the groundswell of opposition can persuade the government to rethink the project. "I saw my old history teacher, my friends, schoolmates," says Jurisic. "I saw that I wasn't alone and that there are more of us, and now it's easier for me. It gave me hope."
