Română
Twenty-eight Romanian and twelve Bulgarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) each sent today a letter to their respective Minister of Environment & Waters, calling for transboundary public consultations over the “Čukaru Peki” and “Malka Golaja” mining and metallurgical complex, proposed by the Chinese company Zijin Mining in eastern Serbia.
The 40 NGOs are drawing attention to the cross-border impact that the vast new complex would have on Romania and Bulgaria, should it ever be built. The project sits near the confluence of the Timok and Danube rivers, where the borders of Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania meet and along the Bulgarian stretch of the Danube, from Bregovo, Vidin and Lom to all downstream municipalities and communities until the river leaves Bulgarian territory.
Each NGO letter invokes the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context and, in particular, its 2003 Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment (the Kyiv Protocol), which extends the logic of cross-border consultation from individual projects to plans and programs. Article 10 of the Kyiv Protocol requires the party of origin, whenever the implementation of a plan or program is likely to have significant transboundary environmental effects, to notify the potentially affected party as early as possible and to give it the opportunity for consultations – including making the plan and environmental report available to its public, in its own language, with comments to be relayed back through the affected party’s authorities. Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia are parties to the Espoo Convention and its Kyiv Protocol.
Earlier this summer, an initial draft of the plan was presented to the locals living in the immediate area. It gathered 2,000 signatures from Zaječar residents opposed to the project in roughly three hours, along with around 300 written objections. The plan covers an industrial area of 126 km² across the municipalities of Bor and Zaječar in Serbia. It provides for the development of the underground Čukaru Peki mine, a new combined open-pit and underground copper-gold mine at Malka Golaja covering an estimated area of more than 1,000 hectares, a flotation tailings storage facility of about 1,900 hectares in the Kriveljska river valley, and a new metallurgical complex to be built outside the urban core of Bor, intended to process concentrate from Čukaru Peki, Malka Golaja and the existing operations of Serbia Zijin Copper, together with associated sulfuric acid production and gas treatment facilities. The plan also includes construction of a smelter with a projected capacity of up to 400,000 tonnes per year.
The plan is financed by Serbia Zijin Mining d.o.o., a subsidiary of the Chinese Zijin Mining group (ZIJMF) – Europe’s second-largest copper producer – which aims to expand its production capacity to 850,000 tonnes per year, most of it destined for export to China.
According to the letter, the plan will affect the area’s hydrographic system. It anticipates the withdrawal of more than 800 liters per second from the Crni Timok river – roughly half of the river’s summer flow – while the Kriveljska river is designated as the site for the roughly 1,900-hectare flotation tailings storage facility. Both watercourses flow, via the Timok, into the Danube, right at the point where the borders of Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania converge.
In their letter the Romanian NGOs also draw attention to the project’s impact on the Vlach community – ethnic Romanians from the Timok region. This minority is historically concentrated in the Bor and Zaječar districts, including the village of Krivelj – roughly 60% Vlach – located directly on the bank of the Kriveljska river. In an August 2025 communication, UN Special Rapporteurs voiced concern that the burden of Zijin’s expansions would fall disproportionately on this minority, flagging the risk of expropriation linked to the expansion of the Čukaru Peki mine – one of the two mines targeted for expansion. Serbia’s Vlach community is an officially recognized national minority, protected both under Article 14 of the Serbian Constitution and under international law.
The area is rich in biodiversity: local NGOs from the Timok region working on biodiversity and nature conservation recorded more than 280 protected plant and animal species and 16 habitat types of international importance within the project’s perimeter. 2025 field studies at Malka Golaja, one of the sites, recorded 91 species protected under the Bern Convention, 21 under the EU Habitats Directive, and 29 under the EU Birds Directive.
The plan overlaps with a continuous 7,000-year cultural corridor made up largely of unmapped prehistoric, ancient Roman and medieval sites. These include the cadastral areas of the settlements of Nikoličevo and Slatina – both heavily targeted by the Spatial Plan for the mining and metallurgical facilities – which contain known ancient Roman agricultural estates (villae rusticae), ancient roads, and thermal-water infrastructure linked to the court of Emperor Galerius. The Gamzigrad-Romuliana UNESCO site lies roughly 6 km from the planned Malka Golaja mine.
Under Serbia’s Law on Planning and Construction, the authorities are expected to publish the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in about 12 months, followed by public consultations. According to the letters sent to the Romanian and Bulgarian environment ministry, this is the point at which Romania’s and Bulgaria’s real participation becomes possible and relevant, since only then will the technical content and the SEA report be available for public review. Because Article 10 of the Kyiv Protocol requires notification “as early as possible,” the letters ask the respective ministries to secure Romania’s and Bulgaria’s position and rights in this process well in advance.
The letters from the Romanian and Bulgarian NGOs come just days after Zijin Mining faced a criminal complaint over the illegal clearing of 30 hectares of forest in preparation for the planned expansion. News that local NGOs from the Timok region had managed to intervene and halt further clearing sparked a wave of support in the Serbian press.
This is not the first time Zijin, which has operated the RTB Bor copper complex since 2018, has been sanctioned for breaking the law: in 2020, the Bor municipal administration filed a criminal complaint against the management of Zijin’s copper smelter over excessive sulfur dioxide pollution, with concentrations reaching up to 2,285 micrograms per cubic meter, against a legal limit of 350. In 2024, Zijin Copper was fined 2 million Serbian dinars (about $18,873) for illegal construction of a mining facility in Bor.
