Cav's Place

After Romania won the arbitration case, allowing RMGC’s exploitation license for Rosia Montana to expire and not extending it seemed quite certain, nothing more than a mere formality, and that was what happened on Thursday, the announcement being made with little fanfare. So, even though the company keeps lashing out, announcing that it will “vigorously pursue all legal avenues” against the decision, while also maintaining its intent to challenge the decision in the arbitration case, the matter would seem to pretty much be put to rest, at long last.
Well, that may not be the case, because yesterday, so only a day later, our Government approved what they claim to be the implementation of the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, with the public statements taking care to underline an amendment that was pushed forward by Romanian MEPs that refers to exploiting the materials left in tailings dumps and decantation ponds. And that implementation does stress the requirement to adhere to environmental standards and also obtain the approval of the local community, which is an improvement, though obviously far from sufficient, since the existing environmental standards are little more than a joke compared to what they should be and people can easily be persuaded to agree to harmful things. However, the decision also includes an article that states that mines or other exploitation activities of non-energy mineral resources may be reopened if they were previously closed or if the license expired. When the Minister of Economy was directly asked whether that changes anything about Rosia Montana, he said that it didn’t, but one pretty obvious interpretation of that article is that the mine could be reopened simply because a license for it used to exist.
Of course, while it’s clearly the best known one, the one that generates the strongest reactions and emotions, that’s just one specific case and many other places could, and at least some of them very likely will, be affected by such regulations, and that’s on top of the major problems that the Critical Raw Materials Act has, in itself, which is why its current form was, and still is, fought against at every level. So the truth is that what the future will hold still remains to be seen… And, considering the changes brought by the recent European Parliament elections, and the fact that environmental regulations kept being pushed back even before, there’s every reason to remain alert.