Trade and investment agreements
In some cases, MoUs can be a backdoor mechanism for signing new Free Trade Agreements or building upon existing ones. As the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, said, these partnerships are complementary to the EU´s FTAs: ‘Provisions in trade agreements are legally binding, while partnerships offer a political framework for concrete bilateral cooperation in the specific field of raw materials, to turn economic opportunities into mutually beneficial realities.’1
Serbia currently has 55 Bilateral Investment Agreements signed including with most EU countries. Investment agreements give access to recourse to investment arbitration, and result Serbia has 15 ISDS cases as a result. In 2021, Rio Tinto filed a notice of dispute related to the government announcement to cancel the Lithium project in the Jadar Valley under the UK-Serbia bilateral investment agreement. According to IA Reporter it remains unclear whether it has been formally lodged under the BIT, what is now clear is that the government has now given the green light to reopen the Lithium mine.2
Strategic Partnerships and trade agreements are the confirmation that the sides will guarantee an enabling environment for foreign investors in the “productions and trade of EVs, including raw materials and batteries”. This means to ensure open and free markets “absent of distortions”, such as export bans on raw materials, no dual pricing and avoiding any type of monopolistic competition or the nationalization of materials and minerals.