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About 4,000 people marched Thursday in Athens against the government decision to revoke Canada’s Eldorado Gold Corp.’s licence to develop a gold mine in Skouries. (Image: Screenshot via YouTube)
Close to 4,000 people protested Thursday in Greece against the looming closure of a gold mine owned by Canada’s Eldorado Gold Corp. (TSX:ELD) (NYSE:EGO), the biggest foreign investor in the country.
The mine supporters fear massive job losses because the new radical left-led government decided to revoke the company’s licence to develop the project in Skouries, northern Greece, on environmental and financial grounds.
Police, reports Reuters, closed main roads as angry miners marched to the ministry responsible for environment and development Thursday, where they shouted slogans and banged their hard hats on the ground.
The ruling Syriza party has accused the mining company of encouraging the protests.
Eldorado said last month that it believed there was no legal basis for the government to revoke permission to complete construction of a key ore enrichment plant at the Skouries mine. It also warned the ministry’s decision could force it to reconsider its investment plans.
Divisive issue
Skouries has had locals divided since early 2011, when the Eldorado’s subsidiary Hellenic Gold received government approval to mine in the northern peninsula.
Some claim the mine, owned 95% by Eldorado, may hurt tourism and the environment, while others believe the operation is good news for Greece because it will generate new jobs and bring hundreds of millions into the struggling economy.
Truth is Skouries was the flagship project of the last government’s foreign investment drive and, for many, remains a test case that would reveal whether Greece is able to protect foreign investors despite local opposition.
Eldorado has invested more than $450 million since 2012 on construction and development of the Skouries and Olympias mines in Greece, and had planned to invest another $200 million this year to advance construction at Skouries.
4 Comments
fred
Its time for Americans to put jerks like DOGMI and USForesty, BLM in there place…so many gods walking the forest.
BritishGeo
Financial crisis, vast population unemployed, crippling debt………best option: blame foreign investors and change laws around them for no reason preventing millions of euros hitting your economy and therefore preventing other foreign investors wanting to invest in your country. Bravo Greece, bravo!
δυτικομακεδόνας
Well, that’ s not really a true story. The protesters were the mine workers with their families, not other supporters of the “investment”. Eldorado was granted a licence by the previous government to build a flash smelter. However, the ore is reported to have a high arsenic content and flash smelting may not be applicable. So Eldorado exports the ore unprocessed to China and seems to have no intention to build the smelter. But this is not what Eldorado was supposed to be doing in Skouries, so any rational (either right or left wing) government would have recalled the permit.
The specific ore can be treated with cyanids, however this process is out of the question for Greece.
Skouries is supposed to be an “eldorado” for Greece, not only for Eldorado. The nearby area is a very attractive summer destination, and the environment has to be carefully preserved. Eldorado has done nothing so far to prove their sincere intentions on the investment. So the “millions of euros hitting the economy” is only in someone’s imagination. The era of Ferdinando Cortes is over, at least in Greece.
MiningWatch Canada
Questions: Who paid their way to Athens,
who gave them placards, why do their ‘work’ clothes look so clean?