The Mining Law Review

Reproduced with permission from Law Business Research Ltd. This article was first published in The Mining Law Review - Edition 3 (published in October 2014 – editor Erik Richer La Flèche).

Before 1989, when the Communism regime fell, mineral resources in Romania were exploited by state-owned companies. Although these exploitations were advertised as big economic successes of the communist governments, in reality, most of them were using outdated technology and some caused significant pollution in the mining perimeters. Moreover, in the context of Romania’s negotiations to join the European Union, some of the mining exploitations had to be shut down as they were far from being compliant with the European environmental standards.

In recent years, Romanian governments have realised that the existing legal framework needs to be improved in order to speed up the process of authorising mining projects, but there is as yet no political consent on improving the legal environment in this field. It is, however, expected that in the near future efforts will be taken to improve the legal framework so as to offer incentives to investors willing to resume mining activities in Romania.

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