EUMINDA

More than 50 coal mining regions in Europe are currently spread across 17 countries. However, as part of the EU’s accelerating energy transition, the extraction of raw materials is being phased out, leading to several active, abandoned, or repurposed mines with long-term natural and social consequences, unanswered liability questions, and left behind communities.

EUMINDA aims to influence policies that contribute to the just transition principle to better recognise, balance, and repair long-term mining damages and legacies (MDLs) on societies and the environment. MDLs are defined across three intersectional challenge themes – legal aspects, socio-economic concerns, and sustainability – that account for the mining transition timeline's past, present, and/or planned activities.

EUMINDA brings together 12 project partners (including one discovery partner), 3 Associated Policy Authorities representing 9 countries (including 2 EU candidates) and 8 policy instruments. Selected regions are at different stages of the mining cycle and have complementary resources. The project will advance interregional cooperation in policy approaches to improve institutional frameworks dealing with long-term MDLs via the capacity building of relevant organisations and policy-makers and the involvement of citizens and stakeholders in the phasing out, continuing, or sustainable reuse of mining sites.

The Core Phase of EUMINDA is built up as 1) status analysis, 2) stakeholder-inclusive capacity building and 3) policy improvement. Additionally, partners may develop a versatile data analysis method to detect causal links between mining activities and damages via a potential pilot (to be decided on and applied for at mid-term).

Ultimately, EUMINDA facilitates an interregional testing ground for implementing sustainable urban and regional development that prioritises the betterment of the present and the reimagining of the future for EU mining communities.