Christin Stühlen

Green transition efforts in South­eastern Europe are shaped by two simultaneous and partly inter­connected developments linked to European politics and EU accession prospects. On the one hand, countries in the region are undergoing a domestic shift from fossil fuels – especially coal – toward renewable energy sources, which is a requirement of EU accession. On the other hand, the EU’s own transition to a green economy increas­ingly relies on so-called transition minerals, such as lithium. Policies like the European Critical Raw Materials Act (ECRMA) provide economic incentives for trans­national companies to develop new mining projects in the region, often framed by domestic and international actors as aligning with high environmental and social standards.  

However, resistance against these efforts is growing across the Balkans. Protest movements frequently point to dys­functional and corrupt state institutions, alongside a lack of trans­parency and accountability, as key threats to local environ­ments, livelihoods, and social cohesion. At the same time, labor struggles in coal-dependent regions highlight the challenges of implementing just transition plans for both workers and their regional commu­nities. What connects these arenas of protest is a shared concern that EU-aligned sustaina­bility agendas are under­mining domestic democratic processes and contradict the idea of a “just transition”. 

This project aims to examine the socio-ecological trans­formation conflicts arising from these EU-driven develop­ments in the post-Yugoslav space. Focusing on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia as case studies, the dissertation aims to (1) reconstruct and map these conflicts “from below” – starting from the perspective of protest actors. The first phase consists of explora­tory field research in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, including interviews with local activists, workers, unions, community members, and NGOs, as well as participant observation at protest sites and political events. In this phase, the project seeks to empirically assess how socio-ecological transfor­mation conflicts unfold and evolve, examining their key fields, themes, and trajectories, the dynamics at play, as well as the actors and actor constellations involved. In the second phase, the aim is to (2) zoom in on two specific protest sites (one in each case), exploring their political-economic structures and historical trajectories. Here, the analysis is guided by the research question of why certain socio-ecological conflicts emerge, escalate, or persist in some contexts but not in others. By analytically exploiting differences between the two cases, the project aims to identify recurring socio-ecological conflict patterns across the region, while also examining how the inter- and trans­national dynamics at play, including EU accession processes, are shaping these local struggles.  

Theoretically, the project draws on a rich body of literature on socio-ecological transfor­mation conflicts and regional protest studies, while contributing to it empirically by high­lighting the under­explored context of the (Western) Balkans. The dissertation is informed by a materialist perspective, asking how the EU’s green transition materially shapes social and labor conditions, and thereby potentially also the conditions for peace or conflict, in the region. In doing so, it seeks to reverse the dominant perspective on the EU, EU accession, and EU conditionality – examining them not merely as normative frameworks, but as concrete forces that produce new forms of conflict and contestation in the (Western) Balkans.  

Overall, the project aims to critically assess how EU-led green transition policies interact with local political economies and social dynamics, giving rise to new forms of resistance, conflict, and political agency in South­eastern Europe.