Romania’s amended mining law killed in Parliament

Amendments to the local mining law, which would apply to large scale projects such as the gold and silver project at Rosia Montana, failed in the Chamber of Deputies due to insufficient votes.

The updated law was voted by 160 MPs, while 105 opposed it. Another 22 MPs abstained and 12 did not vote. The bulk of MPs supporting the amended law were from the ruling center left coalition USL.

Dumitru Chirita, an MP part of the left wing PSD and vice-president of the industry committee at the Chamber of Deputies, said the debates on each article of the law would be restarted at a new meeting, according to Agerpres newswire. He did not specify when this meeting would take place.

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The administration and industry committees in the Chamber of Deputies approved on Monday the bill that changed and completed the mining law. The draft bill included provisions that would force miners to disclose on their websites data on production volumes and costs, as well as payments made to the state. Companies exploiting natural resources would also have to issue corporate governance, CSR and environmental protection reports each semester.

Under the amended bill, companies failing to meet these legal requirements would have to pay fines up to EUR 1.1 million, and could be strapped of their licenses for repeated breaches of the law.

Romania’s Senate has rejected this November the draft bill regulating mining at Rosia Montana with a sweeping majority. In addition, the report of a special parliamentary committee that analyzed the mining project was submitted to the general prosecutor’s office. The special committee concluded Romania has to beef up regulation before approving big mining projects and these amendments were up for the final vote in the Chamber of Deputies.

People took to the streets today in Bucharest, Cluj and other cities in Romania and abroad against cyanide-mining at Rosia Montana, as the amendments were voted by MPs.

According to media reports, several dozens of protestors stormed the HQ of the Ombudsman in Bucharest, demanding the draft mining bill be challenged at the Constitutional Court. They left the building after the bill was killed in Parliament.

In Cluj, protestors blocked the entrances of the local HQs of the PSD, PNL and PDL parties and even occupied the HQ of the right wing PDL, the opposition party.

Eugen David, president of Alburnus Maior, an NGO opposing the mining at Rosia Montana, commented this should be the last attempt of the government to “illegitimately favor” mining companies.

At present, Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), the miner designed to operate Europe’s largest gold mining project at Rosia Montana, is grappling with tax evasion allegations after it acquired goods and services from a firm that was part of a larger network of ghost companies, according to prosecutors.

Ovidiu Posirca