Serbia’s leader wins the West with promises of ‘white gold’ — but loses the people (2024)

BELGRADE — Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s quest to become Brussels’ favorite Balkan leader is backfiring.

Vučić has succeeded in locking down a deal to supply the European Union with the lithium it needs to power its electric vehicle fleet of the future.

But, in so doing, he has reawakened a mass movement against a big mining project that has been blessed by both Brussels and Berlin. Taking fright, he has accused protesters who rallied in their tens of thousands on Aug. 10 of plotting to overthrow him.

“It is part of a hybrid approach of conducting ‘color’ revolutions,” Vučić told reporters afterwards, saying that his warning of a possible coup d’état was based on information received from Russia —the Balkan nation’s historic patron.

It’s a paradox: In turning to the West to enable its transition to a green future, Vučić has, his critics say, condemned Serbia’s 7 million people to further economic exploitation and environmental pollution that only puts Western standards of democracy and accountability further out of reach.

“We are becoming a colony of all the great powers,” said Nebojša Petković, a protest leader from Gornje Nedeljice, a hamlet in northwestern Serbia nestled by the main site of the planned mine.

For almost two decades, Petković and his neighbors watched as geologists and prospectors flocked to the banks of the Jadar River. There, they found rich deposits of “white gold” that, by some estimates, could supply up to 90 percent of the lithium that Europe needs to power its transition to emissions-free transportation.

If at first you don’t succeed …

Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto was among the early prospectors. It obtained a permit to develop the Jadar deposit in 2017 — five years after Vučić first rose to power —only for it to be revoked following an earlier wave of protests two years ago.

Yet the hardline nationalist never gave up on the project. And, despite misgivings over his democratic credentials, the EU has counted on — and cultivated — him to make it happen.

Jadar holds some of Europe’s largest reserves of lithium. The Ministry of Mining and Energy estimates that the mine, expected to open in 2028, would produce 58,000 metric tons through 2030 — enough to put batteries in 1.1 million electric vehicles. Rio Tinto has allocated $2.55 billion (€2.23 billion) to implement the project.

The EU’s enthusiasm is not shared by people in Serbia, who feel that its reliance on Vučić has only encouraged his autocratic tendencies. Public trust in the EU has plummeted, according to analysts, as pledges by the bloc’s leaders to promote democratic values in the longtime membership candidate ring increasingly hollow.

“The EU is being hypocritical, because they’re supporting a dictator in Serbia who blocked the judiciary, the media and everything else, but that’s acceptable to them because he’ll deliver the lithium they so sorely need,” Petković told POLITICO.

The Serbian government did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Kremlin playbook

In July, Vučić welcomed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU Green Deal chief Maroš Šefčovič with pomp and circ*mstance to sign a deal formalizing the EU’s support for the mine, along with several memoranda inked with major automakers like Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis.

Just two months earlier, an even more elaborate welcome was laid on for Chinese President Xi Jinping, with hundreds of Serbians gathering to greet him, waving Chinese flags and singing praises of an “ironclad friendship” during his first trip to Europe since the coronavirus pandemic.

Though it might surprise uninitiated observers, both events epitomized Vučić’s approach to foreign policy. This boils down to welcoming all comers to invest — like the Chinese-owned Zijin Copper plant in Bor or Russia owning over 50 percent of Serbia’s oil and gas interests —as long as they keep out of its domestic affairs.

According to Aleksandar Đokić, an expert on Serbia-Russia relations, Moscow is happy to support Vučić’s coup claims no matter what deal he strikes with the West — including allowing him to use its favorite “color revolution”label to delegitimize the protests against the Jadar project.

If Russia claims a color revolution is underway in Serbia, Vučić “can position himself as a brave or almost mythical fighter against the evil, meddling West,” explained Đokić. “If protests happen in Russia, in Moldova or Georgia, it can’t be because people organically dislike their government’s policies; it has to be backed and even financed by the West.”

It’s ironic, considering that the protesters against the lithium mine are rallying against a project that the West really wants. (The U.S. and U.K. ambassadors to Serbia have also voiced support for the deal.)

“Vučić’s message on this has been convoluted. When defending the Rio Tinto mine, he says it’s a testament to the great strides Serbia has made in getting closer to the West,” continued Đokić.

“Yet when people protest against the mine, he claims it’s a Western-backed coup.”

“There is no political motivation”

In Vučić’s Serbia, very little makes it to the national airwaves unless he approves of the message. The weekend demo received a 24-second mention in the public broadcaster’s evening news — which typically ignores anti-government protests.

If the demands of the protesters actually received coverage, the public would understand that their concerns are largely environmental.

“These protests are political, in the sense that the environment is also a political issue. But besides that, there is no political motivation,” said Žaklina Živković, an activist with Pravo na vodu (Right to Water), a group that campaigns for clean river water.

“[We are] worried for the environment and for the future of Serbia, because we don’t want to become a mining country,” she added, pointing to heavy pollution from Chinese-run mining operations and, earlier, from Yugoslav-era heavy industry.

In order to circumvent the media blackout they face, protesters have resorted to blocking highways and thoroughfares. That way, citizens who might not see what is happening on the news will be physically forced to stop and learn about the effects of the mine.

Worried about the mine’s potential to contaminate soil and water in a region that heavily relies on agriculture, one fear is that corrosive acids needed to separate lithium from other compounds could leak out, inhibiting plant growth and harmingecosystems.

“We want to preserve what we have, and we want to have institutions who can guarantee clean air, clean water, and a clean environment,” continued Živković, highlighting that “around 1.5 million people in Serbia don’t have access to clean water.”

Fear campaign

Rio Tinto has led an extensive campaign of its own to assuage those environmental concerns.

“We respect the right to protest, but what we’re seeing here is a fear campaign — deliberate and wilful disinformation saying that we’re an open pit mine, that we’re going to poison water supplies, that agriculture will not continue … anything that can create fear,” Chad Blewitt, the managing director of the Jadar project, told POLITICO in an interview.

Denying the activists’ allegations, Rio Tinto asserts that the underground mine would fully comply with EU and Serbian environmental laws. In June, the company published preliminary drafts of environmental impact assessment studies covering the mine, a surface processing plant, and an industrial waste landfill.

“We’ve been on this project for 20 years and we’ve spent €600 million on it. This is the most studied lithium project in the world,” Blewitt argued.

Blewitt echoed some of the statements made by Scholz and Šefčovič, namely that the mine will be constructed and operated not only to EU standards, but also “the highest standards in the world.”

But the activists are determined to ramp up the pressure. “They say that the sacrifice is worth it, and we don’t agree,” said Živković.