Serbia and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act

By Iñaki Iriarte Mañosa, Marlene Amering, Anne Most, and Katharina Kloß

The green transition is accelerating a race to secure access to critical raw materials with lithium becoming essential to Europe’s move towards a low-carbon economy based on electric vehicles, renewable energy and storage. With China dominating the world’s lithium supply, the EU is pushing to boost its own strategic autonomy by developing new extraction sites.

One of the most high-profile proposals is the Jadar project in western Serbia, which could become a major European source of lithium and boron. However, concerns regarding environmental destruction, the opaque decision-making, and questions about the EU’s influence in the process, resulted in local resistance by the Serbian population.

During this podcast episode, we discuss the Jadar Mining Project in a local and EU policy context with our guests Frauke Seebass, Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Dr. Marc Ringel, Chairholder at the European Chair for Sustainable Development and Climate Transition at Sciences Po, Walter Baier, the president of the European Left and Zoran Eric, a Serbian activist.

This podcast is student-produced. The views and opinions expressed in the episodes are solely those of the guests. They do not represent or reflect the position of the European Chair for Sustainable Development and Climate Transition, nor that of Sciences Po.