Montalegre, Vila Real, Portugal, Dec. 9, 2024 (Lusa) - The northern Portugal central administrative court has confirmed the rejection of the injunction filed by the local council of Montalegre to prevent work from going ahead on the Romano lithium mine.
According to the judgement, dated Friday and to which the Lusa news agency had access on Monday, the court dismissed the appeal filed by the Montalegre council, in the district of Vila Real, confirming the judgement handed down in July by the Mirandela administrative and fiscal court (TAF).
The Mirandela TAF judged the injunction proceedings to be unfounded and, as a result, rejected the injunction requested.
The municipality of Montalegre had filed an injunction against the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) asking for the suspension of the effectiveness of the Environmental Impact Statement (DIA) issued by the APA in September 2023, relating to the lithium exploration project of the company Lusorecursos Portugal Lithium for that district.
In the lawsuit, the municipality claimed that the DIA "makes a mockery of the impacts", allowing it to go ahead with the execution of a project whose construction, to be started pending the main administrative action, "will render useless the rights and interests that it was intended to protect".
"The suspension of a favourable conditional environmental impact assessment (DIA) issued during the preliminary study phase is being requested. However, there will be no construction while the procedure for verifying the environmental compliance of the execution project and the environmental compliance report for the execution project (RECAPE) is underway - as long as there is no licence from the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology," the high court ruling reads.
According to the document, "in fact, there is still no project to be carried out" and that "it is not known what solutions it will contemplate, in what terms it will be able to comply with the constraints, minimisation and compensation measures".
"As has been judged, there is still uncertainty about the likelihood of the environmental impacts being properly detailed and accommodated by the execution project and RECAPE in the context of the procedure for verifying its compliance with the environmental impact statement," it emphasised.
The Mirandela TAF also concluded that the ‘periculum in mora’, one of the necessary requirements for granting the injunction, was not met, as there was no "well-founded fear of a situation of fait accompli or the production of damage that would be difficult to repair for the interests that the applicant seeks to secure in the main proceedings".
Lusa tried to get a reaction from the mayor of Montalegre council, which has not been possible so far.
At the time of the first instance decision, the municipality pointed out that there is a main action in progress which "is independent of the injunction".
The Romano mine in Montalegre obtained a favourable conditional environmental impact assessment from the APA in September 2023, which imposed the allocation of royalties, compensatory measures for the local communities and minimisation measures for the Iberian wolf.
Lusorecursos has already said that it intends to start mining in 2027 and that the refinery should start operating the following year. The mine is contested by local people, the Montalegre council and environmental associations.
PLI/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
