Boticas, Vila Real, Portugal, Sept. 3, 2025 (Lusa) - The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) on Wednesday guaranteed that it has “always acted in strict compliance” with administrative procedures and that it has applied the law in the case of the proposed Barroso lithium mine in Boticas, in northern Portugal, in which it was accused of withholding information.
Following a complaint lodged in 2021 by the Spanish foundation Montescola, the Aarhus Convention Committee concluded that the APA, the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology (DGEG) and the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission ( CCDR-N) had "deliberately and unfoundedly withheld information" in the environmental assessment process for the Barroso mine, according to a conclusion released today.
The open-pit lithium mine was granted a conditional Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 2023 and the London-listed company Savannah Resources plans to start producing lithium in 2027, in the district of Boticas, Vila Real.
In a press release, the APA guaranteed that "it has always acted in strict compliance with administrative procedures, applying the law in accordance with the interpretation applied by all the entities involved in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) procedures" and added that, "at the moment, all the information has already been made available to the applicant".
The institution stressed that "compliance with the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure is not in question, much less public consultation, but only a divergent interpretation by the Convention Compliance Committee regarding the application of point 3 of article 4 of the Aarhus Convention and article 6 of Law no. 26/2016, of 22 August".
In Portugal, it added, the law in question approves the system of access to administrative and environmental information and the re-use of administrative documents, emphasising that "access to documents preparatory to a decision or contained in unfinished proceedings may be deferred until a decision has been taken, the case has been closed or one year has elapsed since it was drawn up".
In this sense, the environment agency said that the law clarifies, in Article 6(3), that the occurrence of the first of these events will determine the end of this deferral.
"It was based on the law, and precisely on the aforementioned article, that access to information preparatory to the decision was deferred until a decision was taken, the file was closed or one year had elapsed after it was drawn up," it said, also considering that "this article of the law is perfectly aligned" with the Aarhus Convention.
The environment agency emphasised that it is "applied to all administrative procedures, namely all environmental impact assessment procedures, and the Barroso mine procedure was no exception".
In fact, it explained, the exception applied to the environmental impact assessment procedure for the Barroso mine concerned the public consultation period, which totalled 114 working days, "longer than any other project subject to environmental impact assessment".
The complaint was filed in 2021 by the Montescola Foundation, a Spanish non-governmental organisation (NGO), and the Aarhus Convention Committee's conclusion was released today in a statement.
The Association Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso (United in Defence of Covas do Barroso - UDCB) and MiningWatch Portugal were observers in the process.
The three NGOs considered that the Committee "corroborates that the environmental impact assessment process did not guarantee the right to public participation" and called for the environmental impact assessment to be cancelled.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters - commonly known as the Aarhus Convention - was adopted on 25 June 1998 in the Danish city of Aarhus.
In Portugal, the Convention entered into force in September 2003.
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