Thousands across Serbia protest lithium mine restart

Thousands rallied in towns across Serbia on Monday (29 July) against the approval of a controversial lithium mine that had been shuttered for two years following mass protests.

Serbia has vast lithium deposits near the western city of Loznica, where a mining project being developed by the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has been a perennial political fault line in the Balkan country in recent years.

Chanting “Rio Tinto go away”, hundreds of protesters marched through the streets of Arandjelovac, Sabac, Kraljevo and Ljig.

Three of the marches attracted at least 1,000 people according to images broadcast by Serbia’s N1 television.

“There is no antidote” to the pollution caused by the mine, chemistry professor Karolina Aleksandrovic said during a live broadcast at the protest in Arandjelovac.

Addressing the Kraljevo march, environmental activist Nebojsa Kovandzic said that Serbia’s “authorities work for their own interests, and never for the interest of the citizens”.

“Apart from all the institutions, they have occupied our rivers, our forests,” Kovandzic said.

The once-shelved mine is central to an agreement signed this month by the European Union and Serbia to develop the supply of lithium, seen as a crucial building block to achieve Europe’s transition to a green economy.

But it has proved unpopular with Serbians worried about pollution, public health and the environmental impact of the project.

The lithium deposits near Loznica were discovered in 2004, but weeks of protests forced the government to halt the project in 2022.

On 16 July, days after a top court ruling overturned a 2022 cancellation of its permits, the government greenlit the project’s restart, sparking a new wave of demonstrations.

On 19 July the European Union and Serbia signed a deal over the supply of battery materials during a “critical raw materials summit”. A German government spokesman said that the deal came against the “backdrop of a sustainable lithium extraction project” in Serbia.

Serbian NGO Archive of Public Gatherings said the high turnout for the protests showed the extent of the opposition to the project.

Pointing to the number of citizens involved, there was “without a doubt an extremely high mobilisation of the local communities which has not happened before in previous protest movements in Serbia”, the organisation said.

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