After Romania, Bulgaria too: 12 organisations ask Sofia to enter the process over Zijin's complex

Twelve Bulgarian non-governmental organisations — among them the Balkani Wildlife Society, Balkanka, the BlueLink foundation, За Земята (For the Earth) and the Green Laws initiative — wrote on 18 August 2026 to Rositsa Karamfilova, Bulgaria's Minister of Environment and Water. They ask Bulgaria to open transboundary consultations on the Spatial Plan for the “Čukaru Peki” and “Malka Golaja” mining and metallurgical complex, under the Kyiv Protocol to the Espoo Convention. The letter comes a day after 28 Romanian organisations asked for the same; that post also sets out the details of the plan itself.

The Timok flows into the Danube upstream of the Bulgarian municipalities of Bregovo, Vidin and Lom, so the organisations ask that Bulgaria be granted recognised status as a potentially affected party at the draft-plan stage: that Bulgarian authorities, municipalities and citizens receive the plan and the strategic environmental assessment report in Bulgarian, and that at the public hearing they be entitled to responses to their comments on the same terms as participants from Serbia. They also ask the ministry to notify downstream municipalities, river basin directorates and communities in good time.

The letter goes a step further than the Romanian one: if Serbia refuses to notify Bulgaria, the organisations want Serbia asked for a written justification of that decision. They also seek independent expert assessments of transboundary and cumulative impacts, including the expansion of the “Južni revir” open pit and the diversion of the Mali Pek river, as well as an assessment of the impact on biodiversity at Malka Golaja, and for the matter to be raised bilaterally with Serbia's ministry and with the European Commission.

The Bulgarian side also points to its own experience on the border. Following complaints by Earth Thrive and Balkanka, in December 2025 the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention adopted decisions calling on Serbia to halt polluting activities in the mining areas of Bosilegrad and the Homolje region and to repair the damage already done, with reporting on transboundary cooperation with Bulgaria. The case concerns the Podvirovi (Karamanica) mine, whose run-off reached the Dragovištica, a river flowing into Bulgaria. The point of the letter is that, unlike in that case, the neighbours should be brought in before the pollution happens.