Southeast & Eastern Europe

Concerns about Serbia’s Jadar project grow due to irregularities by authorities and Rio Tinto. Issues like sustainability failures, activist repression, unlawful assessments, corruption, and political influence, erode trust. This briefing covers the developments, concerns, and implications.

Germany is dependent on labour migration from the Western Balkans. However, the emigration of young, educated people in particular is slowing down both economic and democratic progress in the region.

This study  by the Belgrade Center for  Security Policy examines the political debate around Serbia's Jadar Project, exploring its global significance, key actors, and evolving narratives. It details the debate's stages, its impact on Serbian politics, and the potential future of environmental discourse.

This revived hopes in the Western Balkans that the more than decade-long stalled process would finally start to move faster. 

At the request of the Serbian Ministry of Environment, the Renewables and Environmental Regulations Institute (RERI) comments on the environmental impact study prepared by Rio Tinto for underground lithium and boron exploitation in the Jadar region.

Russia's all-out war against Ukraine has been ravaging the country for more than two years now. It creates a multitude of new challenges that need to be adequately taken into account when planning and implementing Ukraine's reconstruction strategy. A fair and sustainable reconstruction requires gender-sensitive decision-making and implementation of measures.  

In his book, author Vedran Horvat takes a personal journey through the last two decades of politics in the Western Balkans and sheds light on the potential of green politics under extremely difficult conditions.

Recommendations and expectations for German and European policy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has direct and significant implications for the Western Balkans. The lack of a consistent and convincing EU perspective and U.S. engagement in the region opened up space for other actors and scenarios aimed at recomposing the Western Balkans as well as promoted regressive tendencies throughout the region.

The analytical commentaries of this issue discuss the prospects for a just green transition in the Western Balkan countries and their particular contexts of structural injustices in the societies and transition legacies. The fundamental economic and technological changes for a decarbonisation of the widely coal dependent economies in the region need to be accompanied not only by another attitude to nature and biodiversity but also by a new set of social relationships and innovations in governance and civic participation.