Revnic Cristian & Associates has successfully represented the Declic association before the Cluj County Court in challenging the legality of the environmental permit for a gold and copper mining project operated by Canada's Euro Sun Mining and its Samax Romania subsidiary in the Apuseni mountains in Hunedoara County.
According to Revnic Cristian & Associates, its challenge was lodged on November 25, 2022, and centered on the environmental permit having been issued absent environmental impact assessment studies, including those on waterways, underground waters, natural habitats, or climate change, among others.
The Valea Rovina project consists of the exploitation of three gold-copper deposits, on an area of 2,768 hectares in Hunedoara County. Samax Romania, a subsidiary of Canadian publicly listed Euro Sun Mining, fully owns the mining project. According to ESM's website, "the Rovina gold deposit located in west-central Romania is the second largest in Europe and holds about 400 million tons of confirmed resources containing 7 million ounces of gold and 1.4 billion pounds of copper."
According to Declic, "from the exploitation of two huge surface quarries, hundreds of thousands of tons of mining waste would have resulted, which would have been deposited in the area. All this would have destroyed an entire mountain and would have made it impossible for the people of Rovina to live."
"The Cluj County Court judiciously admitted the action and ordered the annulment of the decision to issue the environmental permit and of the environmental permit itself," Revnic Cristian & Associates Senior Associate Roxana Mandrutiu commented. "The case was a particularly complex one, with numerous procedural and substantive law aspects being discussed [...] We welcome the decision of the Cluj Court which confirms the court's awareness of the importance of rigorous compliance with environmental legislation."
According to the firm, Euro Sun Mining stated it would not appeal the court's decision.
The Revnic Cristian & Associates team included Mandrutiu and Associate Isabela Porcius.
