When we talk about the current fight between the Government in Serbia and lobbyists and activists and a significant part of the public regarding the lithium exploitation project, citizens are on the streets because the institutions did not listen to them. Serbia has a history of upside-down energy transition policies from MHE to lithium to now wind farms. These policies are characterized by contradictions and departmental competition instead of cooperation between bodies and organizations of different jurisdictions.
The topic of the potential exploitation of lithium in Jadr has grown beyond its scope and has become the most visible paradigm and symbol of the state’s manner of tailoring plans and regulations to the measure and wishes of investors, excluding citizens from the decision-making process, so public debates and public insights are organized for the mere satisfaction of form without a real discussion and resolution of conflicts of interest, among which there are many that also fall under the objectives of the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans. A current and completely scandalous example is the relocation of the radar station from the town of Samoš to Gudurički vrh in the Vršac mountains to a special nature reserve in the first protection zone where no interventions in the space, let alone construction, are allowed in order to free up or increase the space for a private investor’s wind farm, instead of reducing the project to the extent dictated by the public interest and the interests of other users.
From the Jadar project, which is in focus, remains in the background, the huge expansion of copper and gold mines in Bor, Majdanpek and in the wider area of eastern Serbia, as well as the fact that the Draft of the new Spatial Plan of the RS quite arbitrarily foresees the opening of 40 new mines.
That’s why we have to take one step away from the specific project and return the issue to the field of spatial plan and development plan. For five years now, Serbia has not had a new Spatial Plan as the highest planning act, even though the public review was carried out, albeit with procedural deficiencies. According to the Law on the Planning System, together with the Spatial Plan, a Mutually Agreed Development Plan is adopted. Instead of repeating this procedure and giving us the opportunity to agree on what kind of country we want, how we will shape and protect space, nature, how we will direct economic and social development. We are deprived of that opportunity due to the exhaustion or ineffectiveness of legal mechanisms, as well as the closure of institutions, and often their openly hostile attitude.
Citizens have unfortunately lost many years and public funds in those detours, either through subsidies or through corruption. In such turbulent times and clear views of the public, it is hard to imagine that the company would actually physically start doing anything in the field, there would be violence, and no one wants that. People are really ready to defend the land, water, field, forest with their lives.
As for the role of the EU in this case and the general situation and the perception that the Serbian authorities have the unusually strong support of certain European high officials, the citizens of Serbia expect the EU to be consistent in its current policies and values on which that community rests, but it seems that the EU is giving up on both and this has an effect on Serbia and the region.
When we look at the Law on Critical Raw Materials, nearshoring to shorten supply chains and establish greater control over resources where greater political control can be achieved and the new Nact of the EU budget, which practically boils down to two things – defense and competitiveness. From this we read that there will be a major change, if not a fundamental revision of everything that the EU has been doing for the last twenty years, that a major liberalization and deregulation will follow, perhaps they will resort to shock therapy, so the energy transition will be anything but fair and there is a great risk that the Green Deal will turn into a new extractivist plan that will be implemented to the detriment of citizens and the public interest; scheme to enrich individuals by grabbing public goods.
Due to such unprincipled behavior, the EU has suffered great reputational damage in the entire region, not only in Serbia, because it is interpreted that the rule of law, democracy, human rights, nature protection, etc. they are no longer so important if they are critical raw materials for the preservation stake of a government.
For the process of energy diversification in the Western Balkans, it is very important that this process takes place, but it must happen together with the citizens, not through their backs. It is safe to say that it is characterized by a long delay, institutional inertia, the absence of a systematic and systematic approach and a problematic legal framework whereby we have situations where there are either no regulations, there are regulations, but they are applied selectively, or there are some, but they are not applied at all. Therefore, the process is more spontaneous and subordinated to private profit interests, than to the needs of building a stable and reliable power system with a phased and deliberate decarbonization of the sector and respect for not only economic and energy, but also environmental, security and socio-economic aspects.
While the development of HPP projects is extremely time-consuming and expensive, and climate change and models call it into question, and hydropower plants are becoming more and more controversial due to construction in locations such as Crni vrh on Homolje, the planned HPP Chestobrodica on Bukovik, etc. which are areas of preserved nature and quality environment, the greatest potential for growth is actually in distribution production, i.e. civil energy. Civic energy is energy for change and energy for democratization. This year, 645MW SE and VE were connected to the grid, while we have only 4304 prosumers with a total installed power of 84MW. This is an extremely small number only when viewed in the context of the fact that Serbia has 600 square kilometers of roofs suitable for installing solar panels. In neighboring Croatia, prosumers contribute 1000MW to the system. However, it is precisely in this field that administrative and other obstacles are the greatest and they should be removed without delay.
There is optimism about the future of the Green Agenda, taking into account all the pitfalls and obstacles. Optimism is based on the fact that in Serbia and the region there is a historical momentum of interest among citizens in the environmental issues they consider the most important. Citizens, their associations, assemblies of citizens, new political actors are actively dealing with environmental issues. Here it is important to note that the issues of nature and environmental protection are inseparable and intertwined with the right to life, the right to preserve physical and mental integrity, the right to peaceful enjoyment of property, the right to a home, the right to health and the right to a healthy environment.
How all that strength and will will translate into public policies remains an open question. In addition, additional education and willingness of the institutions to accept the proposals and knowledge that are made available to them is definitely needed.
It is certain that the current approach of both the EU and domestic institutions has not produced sufficiently good results. When adopting public policies, domestic institutions, in addition to being ready to satisfy corporate wishes, by inertia introduce solutions, concepts and projects into them from the seventies when the natural, social, demographic, economic, economic and other conditions were significantly different; there is no adaptation to changed circumstances and natural factors, nor value alignment with the declared. On the other hand, when adopting new regulations and plans, a big problem is the transposition of the EU’s legal acquis in an occasionally clumsy way when uncritically adopting solutions that do not adapt to the local context and specifics, with the absence of building institutional capacities and providing material resources for the effective implementation of policies and regulations.
It is also necessary for the EU to reconsider its approach – how it relates to the region, in terms of sectoral policies and ways and forms of cooperation. For example from unsuccessful examples of establishing waste management and wastewater treatment systems, it would have to draw lessons that would provide valuable guidelines for further action and cooperation with the authorities and other social actors in the countries of the region.
Author’s text by Strahinja Macić from the conference “(E)mission Possible: Green Deal and the Western Balkans” held in Sarajevo, organized by the Boris Diković Foundation .