CINOVEC, Czech Republic—Josef Fasman was still a young boy when a snowman he had built in this small, northwestern town opened his eyes to the dirty side of coal mining.
“He was all nice and white, and the next day he was black,” Fasman, who is now 49, said of the snowman.
Like Fasman, most people in Cinovec, a town of 100 people near the German border in the Ústí region, grew up with memories tied to coal mining. It was an industry at the heart of the former Czechoslovakia’s economy, as the Soviet satellite state rapidly industrialised in the post-war period.
At the peak of the region’s coal industry, between the 1940s and 1960s, there were roughly 70 to 80 mining sites. But declining profitability, increasing awareness of the health and environmental risks posed by mining, and the collapse of Czechoslovakia’s socialist economy eventually led to the closure of the region’s last mine in 1993.
Three decades later, the residents of Cinovec seem to have been caught up in history once again, with mining companies eager to resume digging — not for tin and tungsten this time, but for lithium.
Lithium is one of the critical raw materials the European Union urgently needs to power electric vehicles and other green technologies. It’s also crucial for the bloc’s defence build-up in the face of Russian aggression, given it’s a key component for manufacturing equipment like drones and missiles. Global demand for the white metal could triple by 2040, according to the International Lithium Association.
Unlike other critical minerals that are nowhere to be found on the continent, Europe is estimated to have untapped reserves of lithium amounting to 5% of the world’s supply, with Cinovec believed to contain 3% of such reserves.
For now, however, the bloc imports nearly 100% of the refined white metal it needs, primarily from Chile, Switzerland, Argentina, the United States and China.
To get on a stronger footing, the EU last year approved the Critical Raw Materials Act, a law aimed at boosting homegrown production of 34 minerals considered indispensable to the green and digital transitions. The legislation sets a target for the bloc to source at least 10% of its critical raw materials from local extraction — a pivot that has only gained urgency after the EU effectively became collateral damage in the US-China trade war.
From mining coal to mining lithium
These geopolitical considerations have little sway over residents who believed they had left their mining days behind.
“It's strange that, as the whole country shifts to services, here in the Ústí region we are going from one mine to the other,” said Jiří Kašpar, the mayor of Dubi, the largest city in the region under which Cinovec is administrated.
While manufacturing remains significant in the Czech Republic, the services sector now makes up approximately 60% of the economy. The Ústí region has also changed: Thirty years without mining have allowed the area to transform into a destination for nature lovers and spa goers — a revenue stream that new mines would endanger, locals say.
Geomet, the joint venture overseeing the lithium mine project, has offered compensation of between 22 and 27 million Czech crowns (€909,700 to €1.1 million), roughly a tenth of the municipality’s annual budget. But for Kašpar and many other residents, that would do little to offset the environmental damage and the risks to the area’s hard-won reputation as a spa region.
“It isn’t enough to compensate for what could be here,” Kašpar said. “We should be greener, but another mine doesn’t mean greener or better,” he added.
What’s more, locals say that claims that the new mine would be a boon to employment are ungrounded for one simple reason: there are no miners left. Indeed, there are only three brown coal mines still active in the whole country, while the last black coal mine, at the Polish border, is due to shut down next year.
And, not least of all, the lithium mine is only expected to operate for approximately 25 years, a much shorter life expectancy than that of coal mines, making it unlikely to generate a long-term economic future for the region.
The rise of the white gold in Czech Republic
The first time people in Cinovec heard about the lithium mine project was in the 2010s, when European Metals Holdings (EMH), an Australian and UK listed mineral exploration and development firm, acquired the rights to explore the area. Through a massive drilling programme, the company mapped out the type of lithium held in the underground deposit. Then, a scoping study, aimed at evaluating the potential viability of the project, concluded that the deposit was very “promising.”
The mine made national headlines in 2019, when former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, a right-wing populist, warned that a foreign company was trying to exploit the Czech Republic’s local resources.
But a year later, ČEZ Group, the Czech state energy company, joined forces with EMH, taking a 51% majority stake in the Cinovec project. EMH describes the venture on its website as a bid to make the Czech Republic the first EU country to host the whole value chain for the production of batteries used in electric vehicles.
In 2023, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a public investment bank, announced it would pour €6 million into the development of the project, calling it pivotal to building a “strong, sustainable European electric vehicle battery supply chain to support Europe’s fast-growing shift toward e-mobility.”
Earlier this year, the European Commission identified the Czech deposit as one of 60 “strategic projects” eligible for accelerated permitting. However, it’s still unclear whether a brand-new government led by Babiš, who had been in opposition for four years, will support the mine, given that references to the Cinovec project were absent during the campaign that preceded October’s parliamentary elections.
But aside from political backing, one factor threatening the project’s viability is the price of lithium, which has plummeted over the last three years, making the economics of extraction far less attractive today than when the project was initially conceived.
As lithium prices have fallen consistently since 2022, amid a slump in Chinese demand and an excess of supply, several mines in Australia and in the US have put their operations on hold.
Mining firms’ playbook
The biggest problem, locals in Cinovec say, is that the mining firms have kept the community in the dark, even with operations poised to begin as early as 2027.
Geomet, the joint venture formed by EMH and ČEZ Group, has yet to provide the final feasibility study, which would give residents reliable figures on the mine’s total water usage, as well as clarity over the amount of wastewater that mining is likely to generate, residents say.
“We need expert studies on air, water and noise pollution,” said Kašpar, the mayor, noting that people in Cinovec know from experience that mining isn’t a clean business, and that when things go wrong, it’s the rule rather than the exception.
Water, for instance, still carries traces of past mining, with high concentrations of cadmium and arsenic — heavy metals that new drilling could release, resulting in further groundwater contamination.
“Without these documents, we cannot properly assess the risks and impacts,” warned Kamila Vítek Derynková, the chairwoman of the Cinvald association, a local activsit group waging a fierce resistance campaign against the lithium mine project.
But Geomet brushed aside these concerns, saying it plans to submit an environmental impact assessment by the end of the year. It also said it remains in "close contact” with the local community.
“Every couple of weeks, Geomet has appointments in the towns and villages closest to the mine ...where we come to brief about the current state of the project, so we can hear from the representatives directly,” Roman Gazdik, a spokesperson for ČEZ, told The Parliament in a written statement.
Geomet has long maintained that the mine would have a minimal impact on the environment.
“The project has to be environmentally friendly in any case since the customers of the mined lithium would not support a project that would not have a positive impact on the environment and local communities,” Gazdik noted.
However, much of the proposed mine site sits inside Natura 2000, the EU’s network of protected lands, effectively putting environmental commitments and industrial ambitions on a collision course.
The planned mine would also use 540 GWh of power and consume roughly 17 million litres of diesel each year for transportation and mining vehicles, according to Cinvald.
Vítek Derynková, the activist, said she hopes local voices won’t be ignored.
But keeping communication to a minimum is often how mining firms operate, said Kamila Svobodova, a researcher on post-mining transitions at the Australian University of Queensland.
“Everyone knows that people should be engaged in decision-making, but it’s not happening anywhere,” said Svobodova, who spent a decade studying the social repercussions living next to mines. Mining firms, she said, “minimise talking to people because people complain.”
Anti-mining movement beyond the EU
Residents of Cinovec are now looking at how communities elsewhere are mounting resistance to deter mining firms from breaking ground.
With the EU on a quest to mine on the European continent, it has also identified strategic sites outside the bloc. One of the largest is the Jadar lithium mine, a deposit nestled between Serbia and Bosnia that experts say could produce enough lithium to satisfy 25% of the bloc’s demand.
But in 2021, mass protests erupted over the nascent project, which was being spearheaded by Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. The Serbian government ultimately revoked the company’s mining license, putting a temporary end to the project. Then, in July 2024, the Constitutional Court of Serbia overturned a government decision to halt the mine project on the grounds that it was “unconstitutional.”
Only days later, an impromptu EU delegation made up of former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič flew to Belgrade to sign a memorandum of understanding between the bloc and Serbia —intended to secure a "strategic partnership" on sustainable raw materials, battery supply chains and electric vehicles.
Tens of thousands of Serbians again took to the streets that August to protest the mine, with many demonstrators accusing Brussels of ‘green colonialism’ in its quest to secure critical minerals.
“Paradoxically, the designation of the Jadar Project as ‘strategic’ is one of the most significant strategic mistakes the European Commission could have made with regard to the Serbian population and the Western Balkans more broadly,” said Nina Djukanović, a researcher at the University of Oxford and a campaigner at Bankwatch, an enviornmental NGO.
To Djukanović, resistance to lithium extraction is an inevitable response to what she calls a politics of ‘extractivism’ under the banner of the EU's green transition.
Earlier this month, Rio Tinto indefinitely suspended work on the project, citing the challenge of obtaining permits from the Serbian government.
Cinovec residents, meanwhile, are watching the situation in Serbia closely.
"The nature, the biodiversity landscape, public health, and our homes could become a victim of geopolitical interests and political shortcuts,” Vítek Derynková said. “We want more.”
Sign up to The Parliament's weekly newsletter
Every Friday our editorial team goes behind the headlines to offer insight and analysis on the key stories driving the EU agenda. Subscribe for free here.