Last month, the European Commission hosted two major events — the first Enlargement Forum and the Raw Materials Week. The timing, though likely unintentional, underscored a persistent problem: Europe’s raw materials strategy and enlargement agenda remain largely disconnected, even though both are strategic priorities. Bringing them together could generate mutual benefits. The Western Balkans alone will not solve Europe’s raw materials dependency, but the region can make a meaningful contribution – if cooperation supports industrial upgrading, builds public trust and ensures fair economic gains.
Aligning EU enlargement and resources
A recent report by the think nea initiative was the first to highlight the untapped potential of the Western Balkans’ critical and strategic raw materials for the EU if economic security and enlargement policy were aligned. The region hosts notable deposits of copper, bauxite, nickel, antimony, lithium and, potentially, rare earths — many of which are essential to Europe’s green transition and industrial competitiveness. Yet the Western Balkans remains positioned mostly at the start of global value chains.
Trade patterns make this clear. Serbia exports most of its copper ore to China, while limited processed copper are split between European and Chinese buyers; Montenegro ships bauxite mainly to China but aluminium articles to the EU; Albania sells raw copper to China but processed copper to the EU. The result: the EU receives supply without necessarily gaining strategic resilience; the Western Balkans receive export revenue but limited long-term development.
This imbalance often stems from local deficiencies, including fragmented supply chains, limited investment in processing technologies, outdated geological surveys, and governance challenges that discourage investment and modernisation.
The EU has begun to recognise the region’s strategic potential, most visibly in its partnership agreement with Serbia to enable lithium extraction in Jadar. But the project has sparked intense political and social controversy, and under current conditions, it is unlikely to advance.
At the core lies a profound lack of public trust — the belief that such agreements benefit external partners more than local communities. What is needed is a gradual, transparent approach that builds on the region’s existing raw-material base, embeds credible safeguards, and delivers tangible local benefits before new mining projects are proposed.
From minerals extraction to value
A realistic regional framework should shift the focus from raw materials to value chains. The Western Balkans’s contribution becomes meaningful when refining, processing, recycling and semi-finished production take place locally. This requires investment in not just mining licences but in industrial capacity, and long-term partnerships rather than short-term concessions.
The tools already exist — the Reform and Growth Facility, Horizon Europe, InvestEU and regional innovation platforms. What is required now is prioritisation and coordination.
Because the Western Balkans economies are small, building parallel or redundant infrastructure is not viable. Cross-border coordination on exploration standards, processing facilities, and recycling capacity would reduce costs and accelerate alignment with the EU single market. The emerging Single Market Highway initiative offers a platform. The challenge is turning it into concrete industrial cooperation.
Crucially, securing the region’s resources is not merely a technical or commercial issue. It is fundamentally linked to local governance, public trust and politically legitimacy. Many communities live with the legacy of industrial pollution, opaque decision making and unfair benefit sharing. They mobilise quickly when projects appear to lack transparency or robust environmental safeguards.
Serbia’s Jadar lithium project — suspended after widespread protests in 2022, then recently revived — illustrates the risks of pursuing extractive partnerships without inclusive governance. In North Macedonia, civic mobilisation halted the Ilovica-Štuka gold-copper project; in Bosnia and Herzegovina, local opposition blocked lithium exploration. Without meaningful local benefit and transparent oversight, the political risk to raw material supply is substantial.
The Commission’s latest enlargement report again highlights deficiencies in judicial independence, permit-granting transparency, environmental oversight, and corruption control. These are not peripheral to raw materials policy — they are decisive. They determine whether projects proceed, whether communities accept them, and whether responsible investors stay. Raw materials partnerships should therefore be anchored in progress on the rule of law, environmental protection and industrial policy. This is not conditionality for its own sake; it is the only way cooperation can strengthen rather than sidestep democratic institutions. Without it, projects stall or fail entirely — regardless of geological potential.
Europan enlargement, a strategic investment
Raw materials cooperation and enlargement are not separate tracks; they reinforce each other. As the EU seeks to reduce external dependencies and bolster its strategic autonomy, it needs partners that share regulatory frameworks, environmental standards, and political commitments. On all three counts, the Western Balkans are already closer to the EU than many other potential partners. What is now required is turning this alignment into shared economic benefit.
For the Western Balkans, deeper integration into European value chains offers a foundation for modern industrial development, skilled employment, and technology upgrading — outcomes that market alone have not delivered. For the EU, partnering with the region is about diversifying supply in a way that strengthens resilience without compromising values, and anchoring more of the value chain in a political and regulatory space of trust.
If cooperation delivers tangible community benefit, strengthens the rule of law, and supports value creation beyond mere extraction, it can drive both Europe’s strategic autonomy and regional convergence. If it fails to do so, it risks fuelling Euroscepticism, slowing enlargement further and weakening the EU’s geopolitical credibility.
The Western Balkans should therefore form a meaningful part of Europe’s strategy to enhance resilience and prosperity with partners who share its future. Enlargement policy — depending on how the EU chooses to shape it — will determine whether the EU becomes not merely larger, but stronger.
think nea – New Narratives of EU Integrationis is an initiative of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), supported by the Open Society Foundations – Western Balkans.
This piece draw on think nea’s research report Raw Materials for a Resilient Europe: The EU’s Strategic Partnership with the Western Balkans.
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