The District Court in Banja Luka annulled the decision of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology of Republic of Srpska approving the final Environmental Impact Study for Ugljevik 3 thermal power plant.

This court decision was made in the procedure initiated by Center for the Environment at the beginning of March this year, by filing a lawsuit against the ministry due to the approval of the mentioned study.

Numerous procedural deficiencies, lack of an adequate assessment of polluting emissions -especially carbon dioxide, are some of the crucial arguments for the lawsuit. The main argument of the court, while respecting the allegations from the lawsuit, is the premature decision, which prevented the participation of the interested public in neighboring countries. This primarily refers to the Republic of Croatia, which has not been given a reasonable deadline participation in the public consultations.

“Despite the clear intention of the general public to participate in the current administrative procedure, in terms of objecting to the content of the final version of the Impact Study, the Ministry thwarted the legality of the enacted act, i.e. contrary to both the Espoo Convention on Transboundary Impacts and the Aarhus Convention. This was due to the failure to consider the outcome of the participation of the entire public, as well as the principle of reciprocity, which is why such a court decision was expected,” said Redžib Skomorac, legal advisor at the Center for the Environment.

Environmental activists point out that despite all the efforts undertaken in the past ten years, and the length of monitoring, planning and implementation of this TPP, it is clear that the Ministry is grossly violating both domestic and international obligation. Additionally, it completely relativizes the work of the existing TPP “Ugljevik 1″,  whose harmful emissions are already significantly burdening the environment of Ugljevik region.

“This project is in conflict with all possible agreements, laws and procedures, and it is about time that the authorities in Republika Srpska stop delaying while giving out approvals and permits. The only logical step of the Ministry is to cancel the environmental permit based on an inadequate study, and therefore to “delete” this thermal power plant from all strategies and plans in the RS”, said Dragan Ostić, coordinator of the campaign “Stop dirty energy, the future is renewable” at the Center for environment.

As a reminder: in 2018, on the occasion of the submission of an appeal against the environmental permit by the Center, a Settlement Agreement was concluded between the Secretariat of the Energy Community and the Ministry in Vienna. However, the Ministry unilaterally violated this Agreement and initiated and ended the procedure of a new impact assessment without consulting the Secretariat. After that, the Ministry also issued an environmental permit to the investor, although the administrative dispute against the Impact Study for the same project was not concluded.

As a result, in July 2022, the Center initiated a legal procedure on the environmental permit, a third such permit that was issued for this facility.

“The Court decision now establishes relevant facts about the legality of the Ministries decision, on which the environmental permit for this facility is based on. We have forwarded this decision to the acting Court for review, since it represents significant evidence in the proceding that we subsequently initiated against the environmental permit itself, because it represents preliminary reference, on which basis the environmental permit should be voided as well”, Skomorac added.

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Besides projects defined by programmes, Center for environment is actively working on other topics in the field of environment and on networking with other organizations at the regional and international level. In the section "Other Projects" we are presenting projects which are not related to the specific program.

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There is no ongoing projects in "Our space" programme at the moment.

Besides projects defined by programmes, Center for environment is actively working on other topics in the field of environment and on networking with other organizations at the regional and international level. In the section "Other Projects" we are presenting projects which are not related to the specific program.

Ongoing project and activities Completed projects and activities

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