TS: Government Openly Supports Jadar Project

Nemanja Nenadic (BETAPHOTO/MEDIA CENTER BELGRADE)

Transparency Serbia director Nemanja Nenadic said on Sept. 12 that the Serbian Cabinet "is very transparent in its support for the Jadar project which questions its impartiality when decisions on whether the project will be realized or not are to be brought."

In an interview with the latest edition of the NIN weekly, he said that formally speaking a decision had not yet been reached, explaining that the Transparency Serbia NGO was interested in several things with regard to the project.

"The first is the economic aspect. It is quite clear that there are going to be damages and risks to the environment. On the other hand, the minister of finance has said that the effect on GDP will be from EUR10-12 billion. We tried to find out what this estimate is based on. We assumed that there were analyses. Second, the effect on the budget interests us more than on GDP because citizens benefit from the budget. We received no response from the Ministry of Finance," Nenadic said.

"The important thing here is lithium and lobbying. We have a situation where many have called the government's behavior corrupt and a government that does nothing to deny these suspicions, to the contrary, it is acting as a neutral subject in the process, when it is the one that is supposed to decide. The government is supposed to decide whether ecological standards have been met," Nenadic said, adding that the argument that Rio Tinto will seek damages if not allowed to go ahead with the project was being mentioned, but that it had yet to be explained.