New gov't directive restores legal order concerning lithium mining project to previous state

BELGRADE - The Serbian government announced on Tuesday it had adopted a new directive to restore the legal order concerning the Jadar lithium mining project to the state it was in prior to a directive that has recently been ruled unconstitutional.

An official statement released after a government session noted that the Constitutional Court had ruled that a 2022 government directive abolishing an earlier directive on establishing a special-purpose area for the implementation of a project to mine and process jadarite - a mineral that contains lithium - was not in accordance with the Constitution and the law.

The 2022 directive effectively ground the project to a halt.

In the July 11 ruling, the Constitutional Court said the government's competences and spatial planning regulations gave no reason to conclude that adopting the 2022 directive was not within the government's competences, but that the government had overstepped its competences by adopting the directive in a manner not in accordance with Article 3 of the Constitution and the provisions of the Law on the Government and the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment.