For most of the last two decades Serbia’s industrial competitiveness was framed around familiar variables: labour cost, tax stability, logistics access to the EU, and a reasonably priced electricity system anchored in domestic lignite and hydropower. Energy was important, but it was largely treated as a predictable input—cheap enough, stable enough, and rarely decisive on

Europe’s decarbonisation agenda is accelerating faster in steel and metallurgy than in almost any other heavy industry. The European Green Deal, CBAM implementation, rising carbon costs, corporate ESG commitments, and trade-policy alignment with global decarbonisation frameworks have fundamentally changed the economics of metal production. Steel, aluminium, copper and high-alloy materials are all moving toward electrification,