For almost a year and half, one of the largest student movements in Europe has been transforming Serbia’s society. The protests, which have drawn hundreds of thousands of people, are not just a form of resistance against an authoritarian regime. As Nina Djukanović argues, through collaboration with other groups, such as environmental organizations and local anti-mining movements, a new vision of development and democracy is emerging.
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“We brought you water from our springs and we want just to remind you that we are ready to […] give all of our strength to keep what’s ours. And we welcome you to visit our waterfalls, our national parks, our nature and our country because it’s a beautiful place. And we just need a little bit of help to make it even better.”
With these words, a student from Serbia handed bottles of spring water to three Members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg last April. This marked the end of a journey over 1,400 kilometers long, which a group of eighty students from Serbia cycled over the course of thirteen days. It began in Novi Sad, the country’s second-largest city, where the collapse of a concrete roof canopy of the newly renovated main train station on 1st November 2024 killed a total of 16 people triggered student-led blockades of universities and mass protests. To draw the attention of institutions across Europe and the broader public to the situation in Serbia, the cyclists set out on a long journey through several major cities, including Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Munich, and Stuttgart.
The student’s gesture was not mere praise of Serbia’s natural beauty. It was a message related to the planned lithium mine in the Jadar Valley in western Serbia, as well as connected to other extractive projects all across the country. At that very time when the students set to cycle across Europe, the European Commission was discussing whether the Jadar Project, lead by the multinational mining corporation Rio Tinto, should be included on the list of strategic projects under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act. The list of strategic projects within the European Union, was published at the end of March 2025, and the general public in Serbia was eagerly awaiting the announcement of projects outside the EU to see whether the Jadar Project would receive the EU’s support despite the ongoing mass protests against it.
The local community of the Jadar Valley shared the video of the student handing the water bottles on their social media, causing it to go viral. The student in the video can also be seen wearing a T-shirt with the logo of Ne Damo Jadar (We Won’t Give Jadar), an informal organization of locals and activists who have been fighting against the planned lithium mine for years. Ne Damo Jadar was also among the first organizations to begin supporting the students in their blockades including, among other things, cooking hundreds of hot meals for the students during their marches across Serbia.
The student’s message resonated strongly with the protesting public, which had observed the silence of other countries’ leaders regarding the student movement for months – a silence that is obviously linked to the EU’s business interests and the dominant perception of President Aleksandar Vučić as a reliable business partner.
Against the corruption and mining
The student cyclists in Strasbourg also handed a letter to the representatives of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, which summarized the context of the protests in Serbia and included a list of student demands across various universities, as well as a detailed account of human rights violations during the months of protests. These have ranged from physical attacks to politically charged imprisonments. Another highly topical issue at the time was the alleged use of an acoustic weapon against peaceful protesters by the government forces during the 15th March 2025 protest, which, drew hundreds of thousands of participants. Thus the planned lithium mine was viewed as closely connected to other environmental and human rights violations in the country.
In other cases, students have expressed their support for anti-extractivist struggles even more explicitly. In early April 2025, students in faculty blockades coordinated an open letter to the ambassador of the European Union Delegation to Serbia, demanding for the Jadar Project not to be designated as strategic. The letter was signed by over 3,000 professors, researchers, and other academic staff. For years, the scientific community in Serbia has been warning of the potentially catastrophic impact of lithium mining in the fertile agricultural region of the Jadar River. The letter highlights that “[m]illions of Serbian citizens, exercising their sovereignty, will not allow the extraction and processing of jadarite minerals on their territory.” A petition opposing the designation of the project as strategic, which was signed by over 100,000 people in just a few days, was also handed over to the European Delegation.
Students blocking the Faculty of Biology, who published the letter on their website during the blockade on April 1, 2025, described the connection between their anti-corruption protests and the Jadar Project: “People’s resistance to the Jadar Project is rooted in the fight against systemic corruption in Serbia and the people’s right to decide their own fate, which is also the basis of our student demands. Although this initiative is not directly related to our demands, it is important to seize this moment in which the students in blockades have a significant societal impact, and to express our stance on the project whose implementation could have serious consequences for all of us.” “Promoting and declaring the Jadar Project as strategic for the EU is in direct opposition to the fundamental values of the European Union,” the statement continues.
Regardless, in June last year, the European Commission published the list of thirteen strategic projects for critical raw materials outside the European Union, which included the Jadar Project in Serbia. Yet a few months later, it was a different key player that seemingly backed out of the strategic project – Rio Tinto itself. In early November, reports emerged that the company had decided to suspend the project and place it under a ‘care and maintenance’ regime. According to an internal memo, the mining giant could no longer afford to spend at the same level on a project that had reached a deadlock due to relentless opposition, despite all the pressure from the political elites in Europe and Serbia.
Local residents emphasize that this is most merely an effort by Rio Tinto to weather the current politically turbulent situation in Serbia and to resume the project under more favorable conditions. Ne Damo Jadar and other local anti-mining groups thus remain vigilant and continue to organize in coordination with students in blockades and other initiatives. After all, the Jadar project had already been canceled once before, in January 2022. Following months of protests and blockades of major roads, bridges, and highways across the country, the government gave in to the protesters’ demands. However, the project was officially revived in July of last year, with open support from the European Union.
Still, Rio Tinto’s decision presents a major blow to the EU’s raw materials policy, which had relied on the Jadar project to allegedly strengthen its material security and competitiveness. Students in the blockades of the Faculty of Civil Engineering and the Faculty of Forestry recently warned against this, and in collaboration with a local environmental group Rendžeri istočne Srbije (Rangers of East Serbia), they called on the public to flood local politicians with comments on the zoning plan. “It is time to prevent yet another theft and suppression of the people’s fundamental rights,” the students wrote in a statement.
Direct democracy and system change
The student demands have evolved over time. Initially, since the fall of 2024, the main demand was the release of all documentation related to the renovation of the railway station in Novi Sad and the prosecution of those responsible for the tragedy there. After months of protests and repression from the side of the regime, in May 2025, the new parliamentary elections became another key demand, which the President Aleksandar Vučić has continued to refuse to do.
During the months of blockades, the student movement developed the ability to organize itself on the principle of direct democracy through student plenaries at the group, faculty and university levels. Every public statement is coordinated in a way that it is approved by a majority and published as a collective statement. It is precisely thanks to this collective approach that Aleksandar Vučić’s regime has been continuously unable to single out a few individual students as targets and to break up the movement.
As the student protests spread across thanks to growing citizen participation, the students published an open letter to ‘the people of Serbia,’ in which they called on them “organize themselves independently according to the model of direct democracy” through zborovi, (citizen’s assembly) which are self-governing gatherings of citizens also defined by law in Serbia. “What the plenary is to students, the citizens’ assembly is to the people,” the letter states.
Although parliamentary elections have become the dominant demand and the student movement is focused on putting together a list of candidates and bringing about regime change through representative democracy, the transformation of society in Serbia is taking place at a much deeper level – with an emphasis on direct democracy and local organizing. This is crucial precisely when it comes to mining and other extractivist projects, which are often presented as development opportunities for the local communities, and in some cases, such as when it comes to lithium mining, even for the international community as a whole.
“Since the beginning, our goal has been the desire to change the current system of governance, where expertise is devalued and the interests of the privileged are prioritized over the will of the people. It is important that our stance on this issue is clear and known to all, because it concerns us all,” explain the students in the blockade of the Faculty of Biology on their website. Deregulation and simplification through omnibus laws in the European Union, the Critical Raw Materials Act, the designation of projects as strategic, and similar legislative changes at both the European and national levels aim to accelerate mining projects and to further restrict the participation of the local communities in the decision-making process and their self-determination.
It is precisely the solidarity between the student and anti-mining movements in Serbia that highlights the importance of direct democracy and self-organizing. Most importantly, it underscored the people’s right to a future different from the one charted by the political and economic elites.
Note from the editors: A Czech version of this article is available in Deník Referendum.