Mining in Western Balkans should be linked to EU enlargement, experts say

At a time when the European Union is seeking to become increasingly less dependent on China and the United States for the procurement of critical raw materials and rare earth elements, the issue of mining in the Western Balkans – a region aspiring to join the Union soon – has moved to the forefront of the EU policy and industrial agenda.

In countries such as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia, however, major challenges – from environmental degradation and weak regulatory enforcement to limited transparency in concession agreements and insufficient public participation in decision-making – risk undermining the EU’s credibility in upholding its own standards and values.

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However, there may be a way forward. “The EU should link the enlargement policy with the Critical Raw Materials Act when it comes to the state of the rule of law and authoritarian rule,” argue Marko Kmezić, Senior Researcher at the Centre for South-East European Studies at the University of Graz, and Vedran Džihić, Senior Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip).

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As the rule of law and environmental standards are already part of the accession conditionality, bringing them within the framework of the EU’s Regulation aimed at securing a reliable, sustainable, and diversified supply of critical raw materials would be “beneficial” for both partners. While the EU “would ultimately get what it needs” from the Western Balkans, this approach “would anchor Serbia and the broader region more firmly within the EU through a more stable rule of law and democratic framework,” the two analysts explain, drawing from their policy brief on countering authoritarian extractivism for the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG).

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The central question is not simply whether extraction occurs, but whether institutions are strong enough to “ensure that revenues are transparent, communities have genuine influence over decisions, environmental harms are controlled, and benefits are distributed fairly,” Džihić notes. Without those safeguards, resource projects often enrich governments and companies while leaving local populations with “most of the social and environmental costs.”

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Particularly in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EU’s green transition “unfolds in weak, fragmented and authoritarian systems and is not able to ensure either environmental protection, the rule of law, or democratic accountability,” Kmezić argues, referring to all the elements that form part of the conditionality enshrined in the EU accession process.

Indirectly, the EU gives “too many concessions” to the authoritarians in the region – Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is a clear example in this regard – and, as a consequence, it endangers the credibility of the very accession conditionality on which the enlargement process is based.

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The rise of environmental protest movements around projects such as Rio Tinto’s Jadar lithium mine has become intertwined with the broader democratic mobilisation of Serbian students over the last year and a half, with both also pointing to the EU’s responsibility and double standards.

As Kmezić explains, “no one in Serbia is against mining per se.” What these protests are all about is “the lack of environmental protection and negligence towards the health of citizens,” and not only in the Jadar Valley. One underrated example is copper mining in Bor, where the Chinese company Zijin has a de facto extraterritorial area within Serbia, completely overriding all national, international, and European standards. “This is the fear about what the lack of political accountability and the rule of law would do not only to the soil but also to the people who actually live there.”

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These protests are neither anti-mining nor anti-EU, but they represent “an outcry for democratic accountability, for the rule of law and for the establishment of democratic institutions and regulatory bodies,” the researcher at the Centre for South-East European Studies makes clear. Yet, it becomes “frustrating and unfortunate” when Brussels sides with the Serbian government “because of its own internal interests.” Even the most ardent EU enthusiasts are “very much disappointed” – and this is one of the worst consequences of this whole story: “The EU is completely losing its credibility in the Western Balkans.”

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