The Serbian Parliament opened a session which is due to discuss draft laws on expropriation and referendums with a crowd protesting against the adopting of those laws in front of the building.

The crowd of several hundred people included officials of some opposition parties and environmental activists who first walked into parliament to hand in their demands – taking the two draft laws off the agenda.

Protest organizers said that the draft law on expropriation and the referendum law bring harmful changes to the law and the way a referendum is organized and allows the authorities to take away private property for what they said are harmful projects and state agreements. They said the laws are not linked only to the Rio Tinto lithium mine project in western Serbia but also to other projects, allowing the authorities to declare a public interest and expropriate private property under the draft laws.

Rio Tinto’s Jadar mine, the Belgrade Metro, Belgrade Waterfront and other projects have drawn major criticism from the opposition, experts and environmental activists with claims of corruption and failure to abide by the law.