The lobby register of the German Bundestag is a source of extremely interesting information. Here you can find out, for example, that the consulting firm of former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Alliance 90/The Greens), Joschka Fischer & Company GmbH, has the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto as a client. What the relationship between the “green” Ministry of Economic Affairs and Fischer is like remains to be seen. In any case, Rio Tinto is currently developing a large lithium deposit in the western Serbian valley of the Jadar River, which has met with fierce resistance from Serbian civil society for years. The lithium is to be used in the EU for the production of German electric car batteries.
To this end, on July 19th last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Chairwoman of Alliance 90/The Greens, Franziska Brantner , together with the Vice-President of the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, met with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade. At the “Critical Raw Materials Summit”, the EU and Serbia concluded a multi-billion dollar strategic agreement on lithium mining.
n his acceptance speech, the Serbian president particularly praised “Chancellor Scholz (…) and all his staff (…) I would like to thank Franziska Brantner (…) endless thanks for supporting this very important project for Serbia.” Vučić’s praise for Brantner, who was heavily involved in the operations, is striking. The fact that lithium extraction can cause major environmental damage does not seem to bother him.
No support for Serbia’s civil society
Neither Scholz nor Brantner consulted the opponents of the project. And neither of them criticized the Vučić regime, which is increasingly authoritarian at home and more and more aggressive abroad. It is scandalous how one of Europe’s last autocrats is being supported while at the same time the mass protests are being ignored. The “primacy of Serbian lithium” seems to apply, although Serbia is ignoring the EU sanctions against Russia, making the EU accession candidate an economic lifeline for Moscow in Europe.
In December, it was also revealed that the government was spying on civil rights activists and journalists using Israeli and Serbian spy software – “spyware” and “NoviSpy”. A department was set up to reject criticism of the Serbian government by foreign media. A law on “foreign agents” based on the Russian model is being prepared. This refers, for example, to NGOs that receive donations from abroad. Such as from the “Open Society Foundation” of the US billionaire George Soros, the favorite target of autocrats.
There are regular death threats against environmental activists such as Aleksandar Matković and professors who have shown solidarity with protesting students, such as Dinko Gruhonjić, winner of the 2024 Human Rights Prize of the city of Weimar. 40 faculties have been on strike since November. After the collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad, which had been renovated by Chinese companies, in which 15 people were killed, protests against rampant corruption and nepotism intensified.
In this context, the lithium deal, initiated by Scholz and implemented by Brantner, was a stroke of luck for the Vučić regime at the right time. The FAZ commented: “The mining of lithium and the dismantling of democracy can certainly go hand in hand – even under the eyes of the EU.”
Vučić accuses the West of coup attempts
On December 10, Scholz received Vučić in Germany to push forward the lithium project. On the same day, Vučić posted a video on Instagram claiming that the protests against him were initiated by Western countries to overthrow him: “I will never serve foreigners who want to defeat, humiliate and destroy Serbia. If they think that I am Assad and that I will run away somewhere, I will not do that.” And Vučić’s rhetoric is becoming more radical. On December 21, he said he would not “run away from the scum who have robbed and privatized everything in Serbia.”
It is strange that he, who has received billions of euros in support from the EU and is courted by Berlin like no other, then indulges in conspiracy theories. No “foreigner” wants to overthrow Vučić, on the contrary, because Berlin and Brussels fatally see him as an “anchor of stability” for the region. But its citizens are tired of living in one of the last European autocracies. The mass exodus of young people is another indicator of this.
Belgrade was at least indirectly involved in several attacks on NATO soldiers and Kosovar security forces in 2022 and 2023. At the time, an escalation was only narrowly averted by pressure from the US and NATO. Vučić had moved his forces towards Kosovo. Wolfgang Ischinger, a former top German diplomat, accused Vučić of wanting to “play a little Putin”. “I find it outrageous how Vučić and the Serbian leadership are stirring up trouble here (…) I blame Belgrade exclusively for this escalation.”
Kosovo’s admission to the Council of Europe is blocked
Furthermore, Serbia is continuously destabilizing Bosnia. Both developments are deeply worrying, as NATO Supreme Commander for Europe, US General Christopher Cavoli, emphasized in 2024. Despite all this, the Federal Chancellery has been blocking Kosovo’s admission to the Council of Europe since May 2024 – for Vučić’s benefit.
How far Belgrade can go is shown by its participation in the unconstitutional paramilitary parade on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the founding of the Republika Srpska (RS) on January 9. While in recent years only one or two ministers took part in this illegal event glorifying genocide, this year it was the entire Serbian government and the leadership of the Serbian parliament, the Skupština.
How far Belgrade can go is shown by its participation in the unconstitutional paramilitary parade on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the founding of the Republika Srpska (RS) on January 9. While in recent years only one or two ministers took part in this illegal event glorifying genocide, this year it was the entire Serbian government and the leadership of the Serbian parliament, the Skupština.
The RS is the part of Bosnia inhabited by a majority of Serbs, whose president, Milorad Dodik, is striving for independence and union with Serbia. On January 9, 1992, his predecessor, Radovan Karadžić, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal, founded the RS and thus laid the foundation for the war in Bosnia, which claimed the lives of over 100,000 people. The guests in the VIP box, who watched the approximately 800 heavily armed special police officers, came from Russia and especially Serbia.
Diplomatic scandal of the first order
The participation of the Serbian government is a diplomatic scandal of the first order. Bosnian Defense Minister Zukan Helez had denied the Serbian Air Force the necessary permits to land in Banja Luka. He would not be an “accomplice to an illegal event.” Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin ranted: “The stupidity of the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina is contagious…” Belgrade got around the flight ban with a trick: the Prime Minister and the Speaker of Parliament were flown in on a plane belonging to the Serbian food manufacturer Swiss Lion. The ministers followed on commercial planes.
The next day, Dodik wrote to the AfD leader, Alice Weidel: “We are united by the same values in the fight for freedom and equality (…) Your party is the only one that represents a conservative, liberal policy and will bring progress and prosperity back to Germany.” Dodik called on all German citizens of Serbian descent to vote for the AfD: “Your election victory will strengthen bilateral German-Serbian relations.”
It is difficult to imagine that Dodik could have provided such campaign support without the agreement with Vučić. The magazine Compact, which is classified as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, reported on “further international support” for the AfD. On January 17, Dodik gave an interview to the Russian television station RT in which he discussed the secession of the RS, clearly with the intention of annexing it to Serbia, thus putting the plan of the genocidal Karadžić into action 30 years after the end of the war.
Only the Left takes a critical stance on the lithium deal
Only the Left Party took a critical stance on the lithium deal in a request to the federal government in November, questioning the state of democracy, the rule of law and the harassment of civil society. Protest notes and requests to the Chancellery were ignored, Jasna Čaušević of the “Society for Threatened Peoples” told the author. In a press release expressing solidarity in support of the Serbian Journalists’ Association of the Vojvodina region, she wrote: “Aleksandar Vučić, who was involved in the atrocities of the Balkan wars of the 1990s (…) shapes a political culture of criminality, concealment and corruption in Serbia. Speaking the truth carries the risk of intimidation, including slander and death threats.”
In a speech on December 2 to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the EU Parliament, Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla-Schwarz warned Chairman David McAllister of Belgrade’s aggressiveness: “Europe has long believed, against all warnings, that Putin could be tied in through economic deals. Europe now believes it can do so with Vučić. Back then it was Russian gas, today it is lithium from Serbia.” This is a precise analysis of the dilemma that Scholz and Brantner have maneuvered themselves into. Vučić and Dodik, on the other hand, know that they can do what they want as long as the lithium project is running.
The following words from Vulin, Vučić’s closest confidant, to Putin in autumn 2024 should also be a wake-up call: “As you know, Serbia is not only a strategic partner of Russia, but also an ally of Russia.” Serbia’s loyalty to Russia is completely denied by both Berlin and Brussels. The lack of solidarity with Serbian civil society is in any case a historic mistake. So one can only hope that at least Dodik’s call to vote for the AfD will make Scholz and Brantner think twice. After all, Dodik is Vučić’s most important asset in the Balkans.
Alexander Rhotert / The Berliner Verlag
Alexander Rhotert has been researching the former Yugoslavia and US foreign policy since 1991. He has been working for the UN, NATO, OSCE, OHR and the EU for over 20 years on diplomatic missions, mostly for peace implementation in the Western Balkans and for research purposes for the Otto Suhr Institute (OSI) and the Eastern European Institute (OEI) of the Free University of Berlin (FU). Most recently, he worked as an intercultural deployment advisor (IEB) for the German Armed Forces for foreign missions with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
