Română
Belgium, 10th September 2024 – Six civil society organizations and numerous citizens gathered this morning for a anti-mining protest in the small Belgian town of Mechelen to send a signal of discontent against Mario Draghi’s proposal for more mining in Europe and in solidarity with communities affected by projects in Portugal, Spain, Serbia and Romania. Shielded from protestors by Belgian police forces, scientist and mining and oil companies like Savannah Resources, Swedish Boliden, and Shell are meeting this week for the International Circular Hydrometallurgy Symposium (ICHS).
Under the motto of “SLO – Silencing Local Opposition”, the protesting organizations criticized the lack of scientific rigor, transparency, and ethics when it comes to academic-industry partnerships that are currently advocating for more metals extraction in Europe and worldwide.
Nik Völker of the transparency initiative MiningWatch Portugal says: “If Draghi’s proposal is that we need to silence the position of local populations and go back to times when Common lands in Portugal were expropriated in the name of progress, this is a really disturbing sign. And it is equally unacceptable to see mining company representatives who also support ruby mining projects in Mozambique with vast human rights abuses, sit with Belgian scientists that tell us how responsible and urgently needed those operations are.”
Event organizers and participants were handed an open letter that details the complaints. Among them, the deliberate decision of the conference organizers to close out any public audience. The letter also urges for a public debate on the true costs of the energy transition’s industrial renaissance for rural communities like in Northern Portugal. In response to Mario Draghi’s report on EU competitiveness, authors claim Europe’s excessive raw materials policies not only create sacrifice zones, but also continue to exceed planetary and societal boundaries.
To secure more raw materials independence and mitigate future supply necks, the Commission had adopted the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) in early 2024. It is currently in the process of selecting projects to be designated of strategic importance in 2025. The list of applicants contains various companies also participating in the Mechelen conference, for example Savannah Resources from Portugal, and the Swedish mining major Boliden.
Roxana Pencea-Bradatan of Miningwatch Romania comments: “The participating mining companies all have a recent track-record of environmental and social wrongdoing. The Rovina copper project would be Europe’s largest copper-gold mine, with more than 10 times the throughput of the stalled Roșia Montană gold mine. In April 2024, the courts ruled the annulment of the Rovina environmental permit and thus sent also a clear signal to the Commission on who may or may not deserve strategic project status under the Critical Raw Materials Act.”
The protest was joined by the Belgian organizations CATAPA, Growth Kills, Grandparents for the Climate, Extinction Rebellion Antwerp and Extinction Rebellion Leuven, in solidarity with the Association United in Defense for Covas do Barroso (Portugal), MiningWatch Romania (Romania), Mars sa Drine (Serbia), and local communities affected by the Boliden dam spill of 1998 in Spain.
