On Saturday 4 December, thousands of protesters blocked roads and bridges across Serbia for the second weekend in a row. They were acting in the hope of derailing two controversial new laws that they claim will allow international mining giant Rio Tinto to extract huge profits from Serbia’s lithium deposits while devastating the local environment. The blockades, which took place all across the country, brought towns and cities to a standstill in what are undoubtedly the largest protests since the overthrow of the nationalist president, Slobodan Milošević, 21 years ago. On 8 December, the government backed down: its first significant concession to opponents in nine years.
Protests have become seemingly never-ending in Serbia since 2017 as it became increasingly clear that president Aleksandar Vučić was transforming the country into an illiberal democracy of the sort found in neighbouring Hungary. Previous waves of demonstrations have been largely dominated by the urban intelligentsia, who have tended to fixate upon arcane concepts such as democracy and judicial independence. This time, though, the entire political spectrum has united against the government by focusing on an issue that affects everybody: the environment. As one ultra-nationalist recently told me, “We all drink the same water”.
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