New mining law enables nickel research projects restart in Serbia

Civil society was engaged against the research in 2013 and around 12.000 people signed a petition to prevent any possibility of nickel research.

In the Parliament of Serbia the Draft of the Law on mining and geology research has been adopted which takes the authority from the local government units regarding decision making about geological research and ore exploitation in their territories. This authority is being transferred exclusively to the Ministry.

According to Miroslav Aleksic, president of Trstenik municipality this means that the intention of the company “Srbija Nickel” to reopen the process of research and exploitation of nickel cannot be prevented neither by the citizens of Trstenik municipality nor the local government. The decision will be made by the Ministry in Belgrade.

We fought hard to stop the exploitation of nickel in Trstenik since it would cause an ecological disaster. By adopting this law we lost the right to continue this fight. There are many negative effects to this law and one of them is that the company which gets the right to research keeps the right to exploit as well – Aleksic said.

The Parliament of the Trstenik municipality has unanimously reached a decision in September to prohibit any activities related to both research and exploitation of nickel. The exploitation field was supposed to encompass 12 villages of Trstenik municipality and 8000 people engaged mainly in agriculture.

Even the civil society was engaged against the research in 2013 and around 12.000 people signed a petition to prevent any possibility of nickel research.