No to gold mining: Romania wins in arbitration court
Romania has won a lawsuit in which it was being sued for damages over the failed gold mining project in Roșia Montană. The Canadian company Gabriel Resources had demanded several billion US dollars in compensation before the World Bank's International Court of Arbitration after Bucharest withdrew its support for the project following nationwide protests. Commentators express relief.
A good thing the project is off the agenda
There were no good arguments in favour of the project, the Romanian service of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle points out:
“Roșia Montană would have been the largest open-pit gold mine in Europe, with four pits, a cyanide plant and a huge 370-hectare chemical retention basin. ... What would happen to the spoil tip and the cyanide basin after the mining ended? What if the dam broke, resulting in a devastating environmental disaster? ... A number of studies have demonstrated the long-term inefficiency of the operation. Romania would have received about 20 billion euros from the entire gold business, which would have been spent on the state budget within a year. Roșia Montană, on the other hand, would have been disfigured forever.”
The money can now be well spent
Business paper Ziarul Financiar is also delighted with this court victory:
“Winning the Roșia Montană case is the best news we could have at the beginning of the year. We were all worried that we would have to fork out almost seven billion euros of our taxpayers' money which would otherwise go to education, health and infrastructure to pay compensation for a case the details of which we no longer remember and which in our eyes symbolises bad governance, irresponsibility, stupidity and white-collar conspiracy. ... We don't have to sacrifice our budget money, despite the fact that we were told in advance on all media channels that we would lose the case.”