Mihajlovic: Jadar Project Stopped Due to Presidential Election

Former mining and energy minister Zorana Mihajlovic has stated that the Jadar project was not stopped because it is harmful to the environment, but because of the presidential election that was to be held several months later.

– It was stopped at the time of the presidential election, and when there is a presidential election, attention is paid to not losing a single vote. How right or not we were is shown, among other things, by the fact that (Serbian President Aleksandar) Vucic won an absolute majority in Nedeljice – Mihajlovic, who recently left the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), said in an interview for the Nova.rs portal.

She said that SNS, whose member she was at the time, had shown that it was vulnerable when the protests against the project started, but also the SNS had seen the error of its ways at the time.

Mihajlovic added that the environmental impact assessment studies had not been completed up till the present moment and that “there is no expert in the world who could know whether it was bad or not.”

– Neither I nor anybody else who appeared in the media, saying that it was bad to the environment. And finally – people in Jadar were not informed and I believe that was out mistake. When I say our mistake, I mean us from the government, but also the company Rio Tinto, which obviously waited for somebody else to do its job – she said.

She said that she believed it was one of the most important projects and that she had supported it for that reason, but that her idea had been for them to wait for the studies to be prepared and to then start the project if everything was right.

When asked about the National Initiative to Ban the Mining of Lithium and Boron with over 30,000 signatures which “disappeared” at the National Assembly of Serbia, Mihajlovic said that she didn’t know what was going on in the parliament, but that “both sides need to calm down and sit down to talk.”

– Everybody has to talk – the authorities, the opposition, the NGO sector, the SASA, local and foreign experts, everybody… When the studies are done, let’s see if it’s really good for us or not – the former minister said.

Srpska Napredna stranka - SNS

SNS

Zorana Mihajlović

Jadar project

lithium exploitation

Jadar project environmental impact assessment study