White Gold in the Jadar River Valley

German chancellor Olaf Scholz invited Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić to the silver-mining town of Freiberg, Saxony in a highly symbolic move in December 2024. For both the chancellor and his guest, the aim was clear: to silence criticism of the lithium extraction planned for Serbia’s Jadar River Valley by leveraging the prestige of the historic Saxon Mining Office and the renowned Freiberg Mining Academy. German engineering expertise was to serve as a sedative for agitated environmentalists.

The social costs to the local population, however, were of secondary importance to the Social Democratic chancellor. Yet from the outset, the debate over lithium mining in Serbia has been not just an environmental issue, but also a social issue.

Capital and State Hand in Hand

The Jadar River Valley is an agricultural region. Its largest city, Loznica, counts only 19,000 inhabitants. Farmers here primarily cultivate for regional demand and personal need, rather than wholesale or export.

The region’s precarious economic situation made it easy for the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and the multinational mining corporation Rio Tinto to persuade people to sell their land. Rio Tinto began aggressively purchasing land in the potential mining area as early as 2020 — four years before the publication of a study on the risks of lithium mining in the Jadar River Valley in June 2024, the results of which had a decisive say in the granting of a licence. The Australian-British mining giant requires an estimated 2,000 hectares to realize its project.

Rio Tinto has always been an unscrupulous corporation willing to do anything for profit.

The local population was led to believe that the decision to proceed with mining had already been made. The Serbian government expedited parliamentary procedures to amend the expropriation law, allowing for land seizures within just five days if deemed in the public interest. In short: facts were fabricated. According to the local NGO Marš sa Drine, over 50 farms in the central mining area have already been sold to Rio Tinto.

As mining plans progressed, so did opposition: a counter-movement emerged. Even the notoriously conservative and government-aligned Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) took a stance against the project at an early stage, citing not only ecological concerns but also the immense social costs and the irreversible depopulation of a crucial agricultural region.

Mass protests against the existing plans erupted in December 2021. In response to this unusually widespread defiance, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić publicly declared that all laws, initiatives, and plans related to the project would be revoked. According to Brnabić, this put “an end to everything related to the Jadar and Rio Tinto project.”

The Myth of Jobs and Prosperity

Nevertheless, numerous NGOs reported that Rio Tinto was not only continuing to carry out geological surveys in the Jadar River Valley, but was also exerting continuous pressure on the local population to sell their farms and land. President Vučić missed no opportunity to call the project’s termination a major strategic mistake. Yet he went further, claiming that foreign intelligence services and their domestic NGO collaborators had sabotaged a historic development opportunity for Serbia.

This simple propaganda tactic marked a shift in the narrative. From that point on, Vučić relentlessly touted the supposed economic benefits of the project. No claim seems too hyperbolic. In December 2022, the Serbian president declared that the partnership with Rio Tinto would generate up to 5,000 high-paying jobs with an average wage of over 1,000 euro and even lead to a population boom in the region.

The corporation itself promises investments totalling 2.55 billion euro and the creation of 1,300 jobs. Since the wave of protests that threatened to jeopardize the project, the company has worked to bolster its image as a responsible and sustainable employer. To gain local support, Rio Tinto has also established various funding initiatives.

On its Serbian website, the company outlines its three core business values: care (for people in general and employees in particular), courage (the willingness to innovate and engage in dialogue with dissenting voices), and curiosity (defined as openness to collaboration and a commitment to learning).

The immense investment sums that Rio Tinto is willing to put into the project suggest that the corporation expects substantial profits, if nothing else.

However, little remains of this lofty self-image once one dives into the company’s actual practices. In reality, Rio Tinto has always been an unscrupulous corporation willing to do anything for profit, with little regard for workers’ rights. Originally a Spanish company, Rio Tinto once supported Franco’s Falangists, due in no small part to the fascist dictatorship’s rigorous crackdown on strikers. The British mining news site Mining Network has documented some of the company’s business practices, and historical evidence shows a corporation that contradicts its self-proclaimed values. In addition to supporting Franco, Rio Tinto supplied ore for Nazi Germany’s rearmament programme and, during apartheid, paid its African workers below the regime’s legally mandated minimum wage. The corporation has repeatedly violated international environmental standards up to the present day.

Given this track record, it is highly questionable whether Rio Tinto will respect labour laws, tolerate trade unions, or accept dissent in Serbia — especially since the Serbian government, which supports lithium mining, has hardly distinguished itself as a defender of workers’ rights.

Money, Money, Money

Predictions concerning the project’s economic benefits for Serbia and the local population vary dramatically. While Rio Tinto and key political figures tout unprecedented gains for all involved, independent financial and economic analysts are more sceptical.

Vučić projected an annual profit of 700 million euro for Serbia’s struggling state budget from the lithium mine alone. He also predicted that the project, alongside a planned cathode factory for the production of batteries and a plant for manufacturing electric cars, would generate returns of 11.4 billion. According to calculations by the renowned Belgrade weekly NIN, that would constitute almost 16.5 percent of Serbia’s GDP. This would represent a massive economic leap forward for the largely deindustrialized country.

However, a group of analysts led by the chairman of the economic association Privrednik arrived at vastly different figures. Their calculations suggest that, after deducting all costs, the Serbian state would make an annual profit of only 17.4 million euro. Whether this project would be economically worthwhile for Serbia after weighing all the possibilities and risks is therefore difficult to answer with any reliability at present. The immense investment sums that Rio Tinto is willing to put into the project, however, suggest that the corporation expects substantial profits, if nothing else.

A Wave of Protest

The plan to mine lithium in the Jadar River Valley was very unpopular with the public from the outset. President Vučić recognized the protest movement that emerged from this opposition as a real threat to his regime and sought to neutralize it by temporarily halting the project.

Yet the project gained renewed momentum, particularly after the signing of the agreement on lithium mining between the EU and Serbia in mid-2024. The operators and their political supporters were determined to proceed without further delay.

Vučić has lost his aura of invincibility, and his grip on power appears shaken.

Then, on 1 November 2024, a disaster struck that exposed the incompetence and corruption of Vučić’s regime: the roof of the main railway station in Novi Sad, the second-largest city in Serbia, collapsed, killing 15 people and sparking widespread public outrage.

Students from the University of Belgrade began protesting, blocking traffic at main intersections for 15 minutes each day — one minute for each deceased victim. They were soon joined by growing numbers of students in other locations. The movement quickly spread to other Serbian cities and has since become the largest student-led protest since the famous uprisings of 1968. Workers, farmers, pensioners, and others have also joined in.

Vučić, whose SNS party secured a controversial election victory in December 2023, has lost his aura of invincibility, and his grip on power appears shaken. However, it is still too early to write off the man who has ruled the country since 2017.

For while the student-led movement has proven successful in mobilizing people and its demands are aimed squarely at the widespread system of corruption surrounding the president, it lacks an independent political organization. The spontaneity and independence that currently constitute its strength could therefore prove to be a weakness.

The outcome of this conflict will likely have an influence on lithium mining. But one thing is certain: Belgrade alone can no longer halt the project, as it is now a European initiative. This once again highlights the main problem: the project’s opponents have few political allies, apart from left-wing MEP Carola Rackete, who has publicly opposed it.

This article first appeared in nd.Aktuell in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Translated by Diego Otero and Anna Dinwoodie for Gegensatz Translation Collective.