Bucharest wrote to Belgrade twice about Zijin, and ten months later there is still no answer

On 11 September 2026 the Romanian portal România curată published a piece by Mihai Goțiu and Stephanie Danielle Roth on how Serbia has gone almost a year without answering Romania's request for the mandatory transboundary consultations on Zijin's expansion in eastern Serbia. The authors had filed an information request with Romania's Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests, asking whether Romania was using its rights under the international conventions. The ministry replied that it had written to the Serbian side twice and received no answer, and handed over the letter minister Diana Buzoianu sent on 13 November 2025.

In that letter Romania says it learned that Serbia had reopened the copper and gold mines at Majdanpek, part of the Serbia Zijin Copper complex, about 11 kilometres from the Romanian border, without first carrying out an environmental impact assessment in a transboundary context, as the Espoo Convention ratified by both countries requires. The minister cites the developer's own statements that wastewater will be discharged into the Danube, a source of drinking water for Romanian towns and villages, and concludes that Romania “cannot exclude a significant negative impact on Romanian territory and population”.

Since Romania was not notified before work began, the minister asks for data on the project's effect on human health, on the measures to prevent and reduce environmental damage, and on monitoring and the reports of the Serbian authorities. She also asks that Romania take part in the assessment procedures for the expansions in the lower zone of Čukaru Peki and in the Bor complex, and for the projects that follow from them. According to what the ministry told the authors, Serbia's ministry has not answered, even though the request was repeated.

România curată then sets out what is already known here: the Spatial Plan covering 126 square kilometres of Bor and Zaječar, the new Malka Golaja mine on more than 1,000 hectares, the tailings facility of some 1,900 hectares in the Kriveljska river valley and a smelter with a sulphuric acid plant. All of the complex's wastewater would end up in the Danube by way of the Timok, at the border of Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, a few kilometres from the Romanian commune of Gruia. The authors note that the planning document itself admits the risk:

“The complex's concept note explicitly acknowledges the transboundary risk: pollution from mining, milling, smelting and refining at Bor can reach Romania and Bulgaria through the Bor, Timok and Kriveljska rivers.”

The portal recalls that copper in the Borska river is almost seven times the legal limit and arsenic in the air more than ninety times the national target, and that pollution has worsened since 2018.

A separate section concerns the Vlach minority of the Timok region, which the plan hits directly through resettlement and expropriation. The authors cite the UN Declaration on the rights of minorities, under which state policies are planned with due regard for the legitimate interests of minorities, and Article 15 of the Council of Europe Framework Convention, which obliges the state to give minorities effective participation in decisions that affect them. In that context they also mention the visit of Romania's Consul General in Zaječar, Mioara Ștefan, to Bor on 16 July 2026, where she met mayor Radiša Petković. The piece also covers the letter of 28 Romanian organisations to minister Buzoianu from August, with the argument that Serbia, according to the European Commission's 2025 report, only partly follows EU rules on water quality and industrial pollution, and that in 2024 it had just eight water inspectors for the whole country. Romania, authors say, therefore cannot rely on Serbia's institution.

For the campaign in Serbia this matters. Until now it was known that Romanian and Bulgarian organisations were asking their governments to enter the process. It is now confirmed that the Romanian state formally asked for this ten months ago, before the Serbian government had even decided to prepare the Spatial Plan, and that Belgrade has stayed silent. România curată says it will keep following the story.