Europe often frames its industrial vulnerability as a resource scarcity issue. Political speeches emphasise “access” to lithium, rare earths, nickel, copper or manganese. Strategy papers discuss upstream partnerships, minerals diplomacy and securing ore supply. But the defining constraint of Europe’s industrial future is not whether materials exist in the world. It is whether Europe controls the systems that convert those materials into usable industrial power.
Control does not sit in the mine. It sits in the refinery, in the smelter, in the alloying plant, in the galvanisation line, in the copper rod mill, in the secondary aluminium furnace, in the converter that turns industrial scrap into feedstock-grade material. It sits in electricity frameworks that stabilise cost, in logistics corridors that guarantee movement, in environmental frameworks that regulate responsibly while enabling execution. Whoever controls these systems controls industry, infrastructure, electrification and competitiveness. Whoever does not becomes an advanced consumer of someone else’s industrial sovereignty.
Europe has too often misunderstood this distinction. It celebrates upstream deals while leaving midstream outside its territory. It constructs strategies about supply while importing value-added semi-products from competitors. It preaches autonomy while losing control over the stages where autonomy is actually created. This is how Europe can speak confidently while becoming structurally dependent.
The correction requires brutally honest strategy. Europe must shift its centre of gravity away from simply “securing materials” toward owning processing, conversion and manufacturing systems. That means scaling European refining, expanding ferroalloy production, anchoring galvanisation capacity, rebuilding copper and zinc processing, modernising aluminium value chains, embedding industrial recycling, industrialising slag and residue recovery and integrating CCS-ready heavy industry into continental planning. These are not environmental gestures; they are sovereignty mechanisms.
Energy reality sits at the core. No material sovereignty exists without electricity sovereignty for industry. Processing cannot survive electricity chaos. Recycling cannot scale if power costs destroy economics. Advanced metallurgy cannot function on speculative energy pricing. If Europe wants to control materials, it must stabilise the energy platforms on which those materials are processed. This is strategic infrastructure, not market abstraction.
Logistics completes the control system. Ports, inland corridors, Danube connectivity, rail-freight capacity, intermodal hubs, gas interconnectors and electricity interconnections determine whether controlled processing capacity is operational or theoretical. Industrial sovereignty requires geography that works physically, not only politically.
And this is precisely where Serbia becomes central.
Serbia is one of the few European geographies capable of physically hosting the control architecture Europe needs. It has metallurgical heritage that can be modernised rather than reinvented from zero. It has copper processing legacy at Bor that, with investment and European integration, can anchor regional copper value chains. Steel and EAF logic intersect naturally with existing regional capabilities. Aluminium recycling and semi-fabrication fit Serbia’s industrial workforce profile. Zinc, galvanisation and industrial minerals processing align with infrastructure demand. Advanced recycling platforms can be embedded near automotive, construction and machinery clusters. Modern processing plants can integrate with Serbia’s evolving energy mix, hydropower, rising renewables and regional interconnections.
Serbia therefore is not simply a participant in Europe’s raw materials strategy — it is a location of system control. It is where Europe can internalise bottlenecks currently controlled elsewhere. It is where materials stop being geopolitical vulnerability and become European capacity. It is where logistics, energy, industry and workforce intersect in a way Western Europe can no longer replicate easily.
For this to work, Europe must treat Serbia not as a dependent periphery but as a strategic co-architect of European industrial sovereignty. That means structured financing, integration into CRMA execution, targeted permitting alignment, stable investment frameworks, joint infrastructure development, and long-term industrial partnerships. It also means Serbia maintaining consistent policy clarity, strengthening institutions, and ensuring that strategic projects meet the technological, environmental and governance standards expected of Europe’s core industrial assets.
If done properly, Europe gains control without over-centralisation and resilience without offshoring. Serbia gains development, employment, capital, technological upgrading and long-term strategic relevance. The relationship becomes mutual power rather than asymmetric dependency.
Europe does not need to dominate extraction worldwide. It needs to dominate the transformation stages that turn raw material into economic and industrial power. Serbia is one of the most credible places in Europe to anchor that transformation.
The global industrial map is being redrawn. Nations that control midstream systems, energy cost structures and logistics will define economic power. Europe still has the chance to secure that future — but only if it builds its control architecture not only conceptually, but geographically. Increasingly, that geography is in South-East Europe, and at the centre of that geography sits Serbia.
If Europe understands this and acts accordingly, autonomy stops being narrative and becomes infrastructure. If it hesitates, others will build the systems Europe failed to anchor — and Europe will once again find itself discussing sovereignty in speeches while losing it in practice.