Critical raw materials pragmatism : democracy and geopolitics in the EU-Serbia lithium deal

The European Union’s (EU) push to secure critical raw materials has raised concerns that geostrategic priorities could come at the expense of democratic and environmental standards in third countries. Serbia’s Jadar lithium project offers insight into this tension. This paper shows that, as critical raw materials gained salience in a changing international context, the EU’s new prioritisation coincided with accelerated decision-making and legal fast-tracking in Serbia, alongside increased government repression – and yet grassroots opposition still prevailed. At the same time, elite narratives increasingly framed the contestation over lithium in geopolitical terms, linking it to Serbia’s foreign policy course. However, we find that support for the lithium protest movement aligned primarily with perceived environmental risks and low institutional trust, rather than geopolitical attitudes. Across two periods (2021-2022 and 2023-2024), a broad coalition of citizen groups and political actors achieved policy reversals and delays despite intensified international engagement and a more repressive domestic setting. We trace these dynamics using policy and legal sequencing, media coverage, and a nationally representative survey. Our findings place the Serbian lithium case at the intersection of resource- and security-driven geopolitics and democratic backsliding, highlighting both the risks of such strategic trade-offs in candidate countries and the potential of grassroots mobilisation to counter the emerging phenomenon of critical raw materials pragmatism. They also suggest that addressing environmental risks, rule of law concerns, and meaningful participation are preconditions for evaluating the viability of large-scale green transition projects in similar contexts.