Formal and Legal Regulations Governing the Award of Concessions in Polish Open Pit Mining

Abstract

This paper presents current legal conditions related to the procedures of awarding concession contracts in Polish open pit mining industry. It lists legal acts which regulate mining activity and the concession-awarding institutions. It additionally discusses the types of awarded concessions. The focus is placed on the difference between minerals covered by the mining ownership and minerals covered by the real estate ownership. The paper also deals with the stages of the process of obtaining an exploitation concession. These stages include primarily the urban planning procedure and the environmental procedure. The urban planning procedure allows the new function of the terrain for open pit mining to be specified in the local urban spatial development plan. The environmental procedure, on the other hand, closes by either granting or denying the so-called environmental decision. Both procedures are performed with public participation. The purpose of the environmental procedure is to select such a mining variant which keeps the environmental burden to a minimum. The last stage of the concession process is to file a concession application to the competent authority. The duration of the concession process depends individually on the legal and actual situation. In practice, the procedures are long-lasting and may take as much as several years. This article also discusses some problems of the Polish concession system. Considerations include the burden of both the planning and the environmental procedures, as well as the problems caused by the number of legal regulations and their frequent changes, or by the reluctant acceptance that mining projects win in local municipalities. Another problem addressed in this paper relates to the protection of documented deposits, as investment projects having different protective status are not equally protected in the law. No adequate measure exists, either, which would protect documented resources from building development.