A reply to Minister Đedović Handanović: the data she calls unfounded is in the government's own document

Serbia's minister of mining and energy, Dubravka Đedović Handanović, told TV Prva that media claims about a mine run by the Chinese company Serbia Zijin Mining near Zaječar serve "to spread panic on unfounded data and information". Her statement was carried by Glas Zaječara. Here is our reply, claim by claim.

"An early public review of a spatial plan (…) does not mean granting permits to open a mine, let alone resettlement, expropriation, taking of land, or pollution of anything."

The first half is correct: an early public review is not a permit. The second half is not. The very document under that review explicitly foresees the possible resettlement of residents from certain zones, should it prove impossible to guarantee safe living conditions, along with the relocation of the Bor-Zaječar state road and part of the power infrastructure. In the zone of direct impact new construction is banned, and maintenance of existing buildings is permitted only "until resettlement". The word "resettlement" was not introduced by the media. It is in the document.

"A permit to explore mining potential also does not mean opening a mine."

Formally true, and beside the point. On 11 June 2026 the forestry inspectorate found that 11.49 hectares of forest at Malka Golaja had been destroyed in breach of the Forest Act and ordered the works stopped. In August, Zaječar councillors filed a criminal complaint, citing 30 hectares cleared against permits for access roads up to six metres wide. The question is not whether an exploration permit equals a mine. It is whether the investor stays within the permit it holds. The inspectorate found that it did not.

"Claims about the opening of a fifth mine (…) serve to spread panic on unfounded data."

The source of that data is the special purpose spatial plan the Serbian government itself put out for early public review. It contains the future "Malka Golaja" mine, a scope of some 126 square kilometres across the territories of Bor and Zaječar, a horizon of 2050, a new smelter of up to 400,000 tonnes of copper a year with space reserved for another 450,000, and dumps for pyrite concentrate and mining waste. If that data is unfounded, then so is the document the minister's own government sent to citizens for comment.

"Technical subjects should be explained by experts genuinely from that field."

We agree. The problem is that the expert documentation does not yet exist. The document itself states that no strategic environmental assessment is produced at this stage, and that the studies for "Malka Golaja" and the smelter were "only recently begun". Citizens are being asked to comment on a plan whose key elements its own drafters have not settled: the smelter's location, the subsidence and collapse zone, the water balance, the financial guarantees for remediation.

Concern for water and thermal springs is "frightening people for political points".

The document promises water recirculation while simultaneously leaving open abstraction from the Timok, the Danube and Lake Bor. Miloš Pavlović of Eko Istok told Danas that over 800 litres per second are planned to be drawn from the Crni Timok, half the river's entire flow in summer. A new exploration borehole was approved two and a half kilometres from Gamzigrad Spa. The claim that tailings "will not pollute groundwater" appears in the document without a single supporting analysis.

"7,000 people work in the Zijin group (…) the average wage is above the national average in that part of Serbia."

Headcount answers no question about water, air or soil. And on 16 June 2026 the same group was banned from importing copper into the United States over forced labour: US customs identified six of the International Labour Organization's eleven forced labour indicators among its workers, including the withholding of wages. The headcount and that finding are both facts.

One thing the minister did not mention

The drafting of the spatial plan in question is financed by Serbia Zijin Mining itself. If citizens are told that technical subjects belong to the experts, it is only fair to say who is paying those experts.