Legal and formal factors related to the mineral raw material deposits accessibility in Europe

Abstract

Over the last decades, the access to mineral raw material deposits has been increasingly limited by diverse limitations and obstacles. Some of them including: permits, taxes and fees, the ownership of mineral deposits, environmental protection rules and land-use and spatial planning conflicts, are related to state (governmental) activities and others such as protests against the mining activity and NIMBY effect, to societal issues. The legal authorities, governments and regulators are the stakeholders involved in the legislative issues of this process. A major potential matter of dispute lies in land-use issues. Diverse land-use types, for example, nature conservation, tourism and building development, can restrict the area available for exploration and/or mining, and thus access to mineral deposits. The nature of the land-use competition seems to be similar in different countries and regions, and so do the land-use conflicts. However, the scale and the underlying reasons of the land-use conflicts may differ. This also applies to the approaches to solve the problems.