Euronews: EU Commissioner says deal on lithium from Serbia soon

“An official trade partnership to source critical raw materials from Serbia is looming with negotiations at the final stages of legal wrangling,” the Commissioner told Euronews at a recent high-level event in Brussels.

It said that a trade deal between the EU and Serbia has been cooking for a while with the signing of a letter of intent last September — to strengthen and expand cooperation on critical raw materials and electric vehicles value chains — a clear signal that the EU executive and Belgrade were keen to join forces, provided that environmental and social acceptance challenges around the prospective mining region were sorted out.

“On the sidelines of the EIT Raw Materials Summit held in Brussels this week Sefcovic referred to Serbia’s “unique position” in relation minerals listed in the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), such as high-quality lithium which he referred to as “one of the best in the world,” Euronews said and expressed the hope that a Memorandum of Understanding would be finalized soon. He said that “current discussions with the Serbian government are focused on extraction, processing, refining and use of lithium”.

“There were some legal issues in the past, which are now being discussed between the company and the government,” he is quoted as saying.

Euronews added that Chad Blewitt, managing director of the Jadar project at Rio Tinto, said the company will release a 200-page environmental impact assessment in the summer. The Anglo-Australian group said it is currently waiting for a decision from the Serbian government and expressed hopes to go ahead with the project — expected to deliver 58 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year, enough to power one million electric vehicles.