After a complaint filed in 2021 by the Spanish foundation Montescola, the Aarhus Convention Committee concluded that the APA, the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology (DGEG), and the North Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N) deliberately and unjustifiably withheld information in the environmental assessment process of the Barroso mine.
The open-pit lithium mine received a conditional Environmental Impact Statement (DIA) in 2023, and Savannah plans to begin lithium production in 2027, in the municipality of Boticas, in the district of Vila Real.
In a press release, the APA stated that it “always acted in strict compliance with administrative procedures, applying the law according to the interpretation used by all entities involved in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures” and added that, “at this moment, all the information has already been made available to the requester.”
The institution emphasized that “neither the compliance of the EIA procedure nor the public consultation is in question, but only a divergent interpretation by the Compliance Committee of the Convention in relation to the application of point 3 of article 4 of the Aarhus Convention and article 6 of Law No. 26/2016, of August 22.”
In Portugal, it clarified, Law No. 26/2016 approves the regime of access to administrative and environmental information and the reuse of administrative documents, highlighting that “access to preparatory documents of a decision or part of unfinished processes can be deferred until a decision is made, the process is archived, or one year has passed since their drafting.”
It further explained that the bill clarifies, in its article 6, paragraph 3, that the occurrence of the first of these events will determine the final end of this deferral.
“It was based on the law, specifically on the cited article, that access to preparatory information of the decision was deferred until a decision was made, the process was archived, or one year had passed since its drafting,” it stated, also considering that “this article of the law is perfectly aligned” with the Aarhus Convention.
The APA stressed that this is “applied to all administrative procedures, notably to all EIA procedures, with the Barroso mine’s EIA procedure being no exception.”
Moreover, it explained, the exception applied to the Barroso mine’s EIA procedure related to the public consultation period, which totaled 114 working days, “longer than any other project subject to EIA.”
In response to Lusa, the DGEG clarified that the aspects mentioned in the complaint mainly fall under the EIA legal framework, whose competent entity is the APA, and that, in the specific case of the Barroso mine, it participated as a member in the evaluation committee (CA).
“In this context, whenever we received requests for access to information, our position was clear and consistent: to direct stakeholders to the information already publicly available on the APA’s portal,” it added.
The complaint was filed in 2021 by the Montescola Foundation, a Spanish non-governmental organization (NGO), and the conclusion of the Aarhus Convention Committee was released today in a communiqué.
The Association Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso (UDCB) and MiningWatch Portugal were observers in the process.
The three NGOs considered that the Committee “corroborates that the environmental impact assessment process did not ensure the right to public participation” and advocated for the annulment of the DIA.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters—commonly known as the Aarhus Convention—was adopted on June 25, 1998, in the Danish city of Aarhus.
In Portugal, the Convention came into effect in September 2003.
[News updated at 5:42 PM]
