POLITICO Brussels Briefing by Jakob Hanke Vela<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FEAR OF A RETURN OF THE MINES:<\/strong> Brussels is preparing a new law \u2014 the Critical Raw Materials Act \u2014 to facilitate mining in Europe. But activists are now mobilizing against it, warning the law would steamroll over local environmental opposition and even allow the construction of mines in protected natural reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s always a news hook:<\/strong> \u201cIn Portugal the prime minister resigned over a probe into corruption over lithium mining,\u201d Bojana Novakovic, a Serbian-Australian actor-turned-activist who is campaigning against mining projects, told Playbook. \u201cCommunities on the ground \u2026 have been expressing grave concerns about lack of transparency relating to this project for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Corruption warning: <\/strong>\u201cCorruption is endemic to mining, and the Critical Raw Materials [Act] is a law which would simply make more of that corruption legal,\u201d Novakovic said. \u201cIt would make the lives of local communities, the lands we care for and the nature we live with even more difficult than it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Background:<\/strong> The law \u2014 currently in negotiations \u2014 establishes a benchmark that at least 10 percent of the \u201cstrategic raw materials\u201d consumed by the EU should be extracted in domestic mines. As part of the measures to speed up mining projects, the regulation would reduce opportunities for local opposition groups to delay permits for new mines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Overriding public interest\u2019:<\/strong> The act currently sets a deadline for authorities of a maximum of 24 months to grant extraction permits. It also limits the public consultation period for environmental impact assessments to 90 days, pointing to an \u201coverriding public interest\u201d that such projects move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Activists gear up: <\/strong>\u201cThe Critical Raw Materials Act is set to take a wrecking ball to human rights and environmental protection,\u201d Laura Sullivan from the WeMove Europe activist network told Playbook. Together with Novakovic and other local organizations, WeMove is launching an online petition<\/a> to scrap the act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Re-shoring pollution: <\/strong>\u201cSupplying Europe used to be a Global South problem and was arguably easier to hide,\u201d Sullivan argued. \u201cBut the Critical Raw Materials Act will bring the mining scale up to European countries like Portugal, Spain, Ireland \u2026 it\u2019s about to become a major problem for people in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POLITICO Brussels Briefing by Jakob Hanke Vela FEAR OF A RETURN OF THE MINES: Brussels is preparing a new law \u2014 the Critical Raw Materials Act \u2014 to facilitate mining in Europe. But activists are now mobilizing against it, warning the law would steamroll over local environmental opposition and even allow the construction of mines in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,55],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-info-and-news-en","8":"category-foreign-media"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1613,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions\/1613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marssadrine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}