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capacities of over 8,500 MW State aid worth RON 27 million from the Ministry of Energy budget will be granted for this operation this year This amount will cover costs of severance payments to employees who lose their jobs (RON 186 thousand); costs of vocational retraining (RON 60 thousand); costs of recultivation of areas (RON 26,996 thousand) CE Hunedoara’s failure to comply with the conditions undertaken in order to obtain state aid to facilitate the closure of uncompetitive coal mines leads the Ministry of Energy to apply the necessary measures to recover it State aid for 2023 is a support measure that is part of a wider plan of measures aimed at closing the uncompetitive mines of the insolvent Complexul Energetic Hunedoara S.A These support measures are granted up to and including 2024 and have been notified to and authorised by the European Commission The closure of the two exploitations requires extensive safety work to avoid the risk of self-ignition According to a study conducted by the Główny Instytut Górnictwa which validated the assessment and risks previously identified by the Romanian experts coal has to be mined for a period of about 4-6 years in the process of mine closure which requires the extension of the closure period of Lonea and Lupeni mines the work to secure the hard coal deposit will be carried out until 31 December 2024 followed by the final closure and land greening works in 2025-2026 given the similar nature of the coal beds at the Vulcan and Livezeni mines measures similar to those established for the Lonea and Lupeni mines are required The Vulcan and Livezeni mines are mining exploitations located in the same coal basin of the Jiu Valley and present the same risks of coal self-ignition According to the results of the Polish study the safe closure of the Livezeni and Vulcan mines can be achieved through the mining of hard coal by 2030 while the final closure and land greening works will be carried out by 31 December 2032 and since then mining activity has been almost uninterrupted here the Government adopted the Emergency Ordinance on the decarbonisation of the energy sector it may be decided to postpone the closure of some coal-fired power plants or restart some energy groups the closure and safety period for coal mines it could be decided – in the event of a crisis situation – to extend their closure until 2026 as well as to close and secure the Livezeni and Vulcan mines until 2032 After the great liquidation of the mining sector in the late 1990s the Jiu Valley region never recovered economically which led to massive depopulation and an ageing resident population The liquidation of the last remnants of mining in the coming years will put even more pressure on the inhabitants of these areas in the absence of viable livelihood alternatives the government launched the “Strategy for the economic social and environmental development of the Jiu Valley (2022 – 2030)” in an attempt to revive the area the Government will be able to use non-reimbursable European funds made available through the Just Transition Mechanism for regions in energy transition but which will generate investments estimated at €30-35 billion plus European money from the Innovation Fund The new strategy has a lot of European money at its disposal the only question mark being the authorities’ ability to develop the projects needed to attract it nine of which have been greened up and two others – Uricani and Paroșeni – are in the process of being greened up The Lonea Mining Exploitation and the Lupeni Mining Exploitation are in a closure programme in accordance with Decision 2010/787/EU supplemented by Decision C(2018) 1001 final with the prospect of completing underground closure works by the end of 2026 recultivation of the surfaces by the end of 2027 it is stated in the Strategy for the economic social and environmental development of the Jiu Valley (2022-2030) published by the Romanian Government Insufficient tax incentives to attract investors In order to support the efforts to attract investment in the Jiu Valley the possibility of higher state aid will be examined as the measure has been tried in the past when the Jiu Valley was declared a disadvantaged area and the investments made benefited from a preferential tax regime this measure has proved insufficient to attract investors for several reasons The area lacked a well-qualified workforce poorly developed transport and social infrastructure etc The Government is betting heavily on the development of tourism in the Jiu Valley this sector will be insufficient to absorb the workforce about 6,200 unemployed people were officially registered in the area of which those with a high school education had the highest share Romania has drafted the decision to grant RON 110 million (EUR 22.6 million) for the… 0 The decision is being prepared by the Ministry of Economy and Energy Jiu Valley is Romania’s best-known coal region It is one of the European Union’s 20 coal regions those that are heavily dependent on mining of the fossil fuel and coal-fired power plants and included in the EU’s Initiative for coal regions in transition It was launched by the European Commission in December 2017 as part of the Clean Energy Package for All Europeans to help coal regions in transition from high to low carbon society The closure of coal mines Lonea and Lupeni was planned for the end of 2018 The closure of the two coal mines was planned for the end of 2018 Now the plan is for the Lonea mine to be closed at the end of this year The grant will be approved for CE Hunedoara as state aid The money will be used for payments to employees costs of the closure of the mines’ pits and the recultivation of the area The company operates two more coal mines in Jiu Valley – Vulcan and Livezeni and coal-fired power plants Mintia and Paroseni More than ten mines were closed in the valley in the last 20 years costs of the closure of the mines’ pits and the recultivation of the areas used for mining The state aid was approved by the European Commission In June, it launched the Just Transition Platform to help member states draw up their territorial just transition plans and access funding from the Just Transition Mechanism, valued at more than EUR 150 billion. The scheme is envisaged by the European Green Deal A few weeks later, Romanian Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said coal is doomed He added the EU’s carbon emissions target may wipe out two fifths of the current domestic power production capability In order to help citizens of the Jiu Valley, nongovernmental organizations Greenpeace and Bankwatch Romania presented a report on scenarios for the just transition of Jiu Valley Be the first one to comment on this article 02 May 2025 - The project is located in Constanța county recognized for its superior yields in green energy production 02 May 2025 - The Sunčana (Sunny) Vipava project envisages installing solar power plants with a combined capacity of 20 MW 30 April 2025 - OMV put into operation its 10 MW green hydrogen plant at the Schwechat refinery 30 April 2025 - It is the second time this year that MVM contracted gas-fueled and hydrogen-ready power plants at sites of former fossil fuel facilities © CENTER FOR PROMOTION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 2008-2020 website developed by ogitive over 100 miners in Lupeni mine in Valea Jiului (Jiu Valley) – a mine that is still functioning but that is earmarked for closure following negotiation with the European Union – refused to come out when their shift ended and declared a strike hundreds of miners in the region protested in solidarity The immediate reason for the strike is clear The company that hires the miners (Hunedoara Energy Complex) is bankrupt and hence was unable to pay their salaries and bonuses for some months the situation is much more dramatic than that and the causes are systemic Chief among them is de-carbonization and the social costs of moving away from fossil fuel their protest was quickly politically instrumentalized in both old and novel ways – to which I will return below The Jiu Valley has been the most important coal-extracting region in Romania and key for its modernizing and industrializing efforts throughout the 20th century Socialist modernization expanded the area exponentially and after the second oil crisis in 1979 coal was expected to completely replace oil in the local production of energy in order to lower costs in the Valley around 70,000 miners extracted approximately 12 million tons of coal per year High intensity levels of labor exploitation coupled with below par levels of work conditions and compensations led to frequent negotiations and clashes between the government and the workers the most significant labor action under Romanian socialism The political militancy of the miners was well known historically a strike in the Lupeni mine against harsh working conditions and austerity was brutally repressed by the government when the army killed 68 miners – one of the bloodiest labor militancy episodes in the interwar period The situation of the miners quickly deteriorated after 1989 when the political economy dramatically changed and too inefficient to make economic sense Forced to leave the area as mines began to shut down the miners could not sell their houses for lack of buyers Some of the state’s assets were privatized others were simply closed and left to ruin Those who stayed in the area were unable to sustain the cost of urban infrastructure One of the key processes in the area was the disconnection of flats and houses from the central heating system With few customers and huge levels of unpaid bills the local electrical power-plants scaled down their activities which meant reducing the amount of coal they bought from the still-existing mines the miners were in effect further reducing their job prospects the entire area switched from coal to timber for heating precisely the inversion of the transition that the socialist urbanization of the area had implemented earlier on decarbonization in the area entailed not only de-urbanization but also the formation of a hybrid type of living environment in which some traditional urban features (such as blocks of flats etc.) coexist with forms of rural living and economic relations The political decision to close down the mines was made in the early years of the first post-communist government. However, politicians had to compromise with the miners when faced with their labor militancy. Organized groups of miners descended on Bucharest on several occasions in the early 1990s, significantly altering the political life of the capital; these events are known as Mineriade in Romanian the miners became figures of socialist working-class brutality about half of the miners were laid off after receiving between 12 and 20 salaries as compensation around 1,000 miners are laid off every year Romania’s EU ascension sped up the process; therefore only four mines exist today out of 15 in 1990 these mines are also expected to close in accordance with EU requirements and the remaining 4,000 miners will be laid off The miners in Lupeni know this very well; they just hope to get their remaining salaries on time until then – a fact that seems unlikely The company that hires them is bankrupt and in mounting levels of debt and objective economic constraints all played their part the company will close down and with it the activity of mining as such The closure of the mines resulted in the social devastation of the area alongside the already ecological one after more than a century and a half of mining Lacking the previous solidarities formed around labor and a shared sense of belonging and pride the miners were unable to fight back collectively except for some isolated cases of bargaining Migration became the only available option for many either as cheap migrant laborers to the west or as agricultural workers in their home villages Gender and family relations were severely altered in the process While the decarbonization process brought women traditionally confined to the household in the miners’ universe and thus offered them a renewed sense of agency they became casual laborers in regional and continental networks of precarious and poorly paid work industrial domesticity was replaced by agricultural domesticity and a completely different type of housework and care It is estimated that about half of the population of the Jiu Valley left in the three decades after 1989 Those who stayed faced specific and unforeseen challenges Miners’ solidarity gave way to a clear distinction between those who readily accepted the compensation from the state and those who did not and remained to work as miners until the end This moral conflict further altered the social fabric and led to the destruction of the previously existing networks of trust and comradeship the closing of the mines was not an even process in terms of consequences it meant immiseration and social dislocation for a select segment it brought in handsome profits One way to achieve this was to become the sole provider of materials the mines needed in their daily activities; the other was to act as intermediary between the mines This led to an increased internal differentiation and class conflict inside the Jiu Valley itself which underscores the uneven and highly contextual consequences of decarbonization in the area Coping mechanisms for those who stayed in the region were diverse but generally combined small-scale entrepreneurship (like mini-markets and bars) with informal labor such as illegal timbering for men and mushroom picking for women Decarbonization entailed not only deskilling but also de-urbanization and a return to village-like economy State efforts to mitigate the impact of decarbonization were ill conceived The mining industry entailed not only extraction per se but also a host of other institutions orbiting it and helping with its reproduction They were either abandoned or privatized as the mines were closed down and the miners began to The state and NGOs envisaged tourism as a solution for regenerating the area and for reallocating labor but the investment was paltry compared to the funds required Employees of the state institutions in the area including a university that in the past educated future mining engineers – a specialization now redundant – constitute an important segment of the population that dispose of constant income and thus can sustain the modicum of economic life from further collapse.  This is the wider historical and social context in which the most recent protests in the Valley (as the region is fondly called by locals) must be understood a self-proclaimed Thatcherite that is currently pursuing an austerity agenda for public workers reacted to the miners’ protests by stressing that during his mandate he will now allow another Mineriada there was not even the slimmest chance of that His message was intended to mobilize the old anticommunist trope of the brutish miners keen to descend on the capital and run havoc It was part of the well-known arsenal of the old right-wing for demonizing and de-humanizing the miners as a violent retrograde social category that does not deserve help or solidarity His speech had the desired performative effect since many social media users rushed to condemn the miners in vitriolic terms as writer Vasile Ernu noted in his op-eds on the issue in a local newspaper the old prejudices against the miners were also couched in green concerns pointing to the climate cost of extracting and burning coal This conflict is well known in other areas experiencing decarbonization and it already played out locally during the protests to Save Roşia Montană in 2013 when the economic wellbeing of the gold miners was opposed to the environmental concerns Finding a right balance between the two is and this type of conflict will escalate further when decarbonization policies (mostly related to oil and gas) will accelerate in the near future how the urban and more educated oilmen and women will react when faced with the decarbonization of their industry it is important to note how the latest protest in Lupeni occasioned the emergence of a different type of populism in Romanian politics was the only high-profile politician to visit the miners and rally to their cause who entered the Parliament recently with the extreme-right party AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) but was expelled following an argument with the leadership has been a very vocal critic of the lockdown measures and of the legal imposition of mandatory masks in public Her “in your face” and confrontational style made her a darling of televisions and her popularity soared Her solidarity with the miners is part of a carefully calculated political ascendancy she set the basis for a very coherent populism that denies climate change and pins the blame for the closure of mines on local politicians subservient to the EU and other nefarious foreign interests Șoșoacă is the first public politician since the 1990s who took the side of the miners and refused to see the closure of the mines as a fait accompli As it is the case with right-wing populism this is another example of a false friend that promises to save workers by way of cheap tricks Vague echoes of Trumpism could be heard in her 10-minute-long speech While for the miners the historical dices are rolled their unwilling political instrumentalization might lead to a new form of populism 30 years after their ideological construction as toxic remnants of communism the miners continue to remain important subjects of political dispute while their immiseration deepens and their social standing worsens Note from LeftEast editors: this article is published in cooperation with the Eastern-European regional portal Bilten. Florin Poenaru is an anthropologist and co-editor of CriticAtac He works on issues of class and post-communism This year the government will allocate state aid worth RON 143.4 million (EUR 32.3 million) in order to properly shut down the uncompetitive coal mines of the Valea Jiului Petrosani Mine Closure National Company State aid is borne entirely by the state budget Small and Medium Enterprises and Business Environment and it was approved by the European Commission in 2012 Petrosani National Coal Company (CNH) owns seven coal production units, respectively Lonea, Petrila, Livezeni, Vulcan, Paroseni, Lupeni and Uricani. The mines within CNH considered to be uncompetitive are Petrila The total amount will be split for the energy coal delivered by the mines undergoing final closure process which will receive RON 93.3 million (EUR 20.9 million) to cover the current production’s losses respectively for the units in the final closing process which will be allocated RON 50.1 million (EUR 11.2 million) for costs not related to the current production Moreover, the amount of RON 25.8 million (EUR 5.8 million) will be used for compensatory wages, while for the works related to the mine closing will be used RON 24.3 million (EUR 54.6 million). We use cookies for keeping our website reliable and secure providing social media features and to analyse how our website is used.