People protested against uranium mining. (source: TASR)
The ministry has not prolonged the licence for geological research area in Košice suburb holiday resort Čermeľ - Jahodná for uranium-molybdenum and copper ores until 2025.
“The Bratislava Regional Court has turned down the lawsuit,” chairwoman of the panel stated, as quoted by the TASR newswire. “Legal charges of the plaintiff will not be covered.”
The regional court this time ruled as the first-instance court, therefore, both sides can appeal the verdict with the Supreme Court.
The licence was issued in 2005 and prolonged by four years in 2009. Last year, further prolonging was dealt with, with environmentalists, Košice city council and representatives of the Košice Self-governing Region being against it. The Environment Ministry did not approve further research, and thus, the research area expired on April 20, 2015. Ludovika Energy then filed a lawsuit.
“With the decision scrutinised here, the plaintiff has been deprived and robbed of its rights when it was stripped of the right to complete geological research in a complex way, elaborate a complex concluding report, and thus it lost the certification to priority right to file an application for the mining area in the sense of the mining law,” legal representative of Ludovika Energy said on June 9, as cited by TASR.
He added that the plaintiff’s investment has been marred, as well as the improvement and protection of the mineral resources according to the Slovak Constitution. The company allegedly invested more than 22 million euros there over the course of ten years.
The chair of the panel in her arguments for the verdict said, among other things, that the law does not oblige the Environment Ministry to prolong the research area. In connection with the uranium mining, also the laws were amended in Slovakia two years ago. Uranium can be mined only in case the inhabitants of the municipalities involved approve it.
