Balancing Act: Reconciling the EU's Green Deal Ambitions with its Geopolitical and Economic Interests in the Western Balkans

In July 2024, the EU signed with Serbia a Memorandum of Understanding on sustainable raw materials, battery value chains, and electric vehicles, representing a significant step in the EU's efforts to secure critical raw materials for its green transition, including a planned lithium extraction in Jadar Valley. The memorandum, while framed as an extension of the Green Deal's principles, reflects the growing tension between environmental objectives and the strategic imperatives of energy security. Serbia's lithium reserves are crucial for the EU's ambitions to secure a green energy transition, yet the partnership's environmental and social implications underscore the challenges of aligning external partnerships with Green Deal norms. Mario Draghi's report, stressing the need for a more assertive EU industrial policy in the semiconductor sector, adds another layer to this discussion. The report emphasizes the need for the EU to strengthen its semiconductor ecosystem and reduce dependencies on external powers, particularly the US and China. Its emphasis on boosting the EU's semiconductor market share highlights the broader geopolitical dynamics at play, including the EU's dependence on critical raw materials and the escalating technological competition with global powers. These dynamics raise a critical puzzle: can the EU sustain its leadership in climate governance while simultaneously pursuing industrial policies aimed at strategic autonomy? How can the EU balance its need for critical raw materials and advanced technologies with its commitment to global environmental leadership? Given its Economic and Investment Plan in the Western Balkans, how can the EU ensure that resource extraction adheres to high environmental and social standards? By engaging with scenario analysis and employing Q-methodology, this research unpacks potential trade-offs between the EU's industrial competitiveness and its commitment to fostering sustainable governance beyond its borders, with special emphasis in the field of energy. By treating scenarios as conceivable yet uncertain worlds, readers can evaluate and contemplate long-term challenges for such projects within these hypothetical settings. To uncover these scenarios, we employ a bottom-up approach that prioritizes the subjective viewpoints of experts through Q-methodology. Q-methodology offers a structured way to identify how experts perceive these issues by highlighting significant differences in their perspectives. The resulting Q-study reflects a range of expert perspectives on the EU's structural foreign policy centered on questions of energy security, environment and infrastructure projects. Notably, we require a relatively small but diverse group of respondents. This targeted sample, while not statistically representative, ensures a diversity of viewpoints crucial for our analysis. The application of this method unfolds in three distinct stages: (1) formulating the "universe" of statements regarding this particular topic ("concourse") and their reduction to a manageable volume which will get subject to further inspection, the Q-sample, (2) selecting the participants (our P-set) along with conducting sorting procedure (Q-sort technique), and (3) the factor analysis. The latter helps us uncover the scenarios.