Proposals for amendment and supplementation of the Mining Act (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia No.61/10, 62/10-corrected, 76/10 and 57/12) - hereinafter referred to as ZRud-1, which regulates the rehabilitation of illegal mines.It is well known to us that for more than a year and a half now, there have been a number of investors waiting at the door of the state bureaucrats who would like to obtain a concession for the exploitation in the rehabilitation of illegal mines - quarries (5.It is important to note that these investors are not the perpetrators of illegal diggings, that they want to obtain a concession for the use of the most widespread mineral resource in Slovenia, i.e. stone, and the bureaucrats are acting as if they were granting a concession for precious stones. Despite this, those who have been waiting have so far received no reply or communication from the bureaucrat in charge as to what will happen to their applications, even though they are entitled to such a reply by law (Article 40(6)). If the investors had received the rejection decisions within the legal time limit, it would have been clear by now whether the existing law is the appropriate basis for granting the concession.
Due to the prohibitive hurdles for the bureaucrats mentioned above, investors will obviously not be able to obtain a concession without a new amendment to the law. In the abovementioned procedures, they are required to attach to the application for a concession the same certificate from the local authority (municipality) as is required for the granting of a concession for economic exploitation, i.e. as in all other cases referred to in Article 34(2) of the ZRud-1. However, it is not possible to obtain such a certificate in the case of such reclamations, since in these cases the procedure is reversed, i.e. it is a procedure which must re-establish the land use that existed on the site of such a mine before or at the time of its creation. In these cases, the certificate would therefore have to confirm the situation that existed in the planning documents at the time of the illegal excavation, which is not necessarily the same as today.
 In our view, the notion of rehabilitation of illegal mines cannot be equated here with the rehabilitation that is an integral part of exploitation. The two concepts can only be equated on their merits, and the principle of legality does not allow this to be done, otherwise the legislator would have already done so. By requiring the abovementioned certificate, it is also required that the zoning plan for the reclamation of the illegal mining site must have the same use as that envisaged for the commercial exploitation. This means, however, that, taking into account the concept of rehabilitation of an illegal mine (Article 4.7 of the second paragraph of Article 4 of the Mining Act), such rehabilitation cannot ensure that the degraded area regains the characteristics (the intended use) required or desired by the zoning act, if it is intended to be used for exploitation. For example, rehabilitation can be used to convert the land into forest or agricultural land.
It was certainly not the intention of the legislator to treat the rehabilitation of illegal mines in the same way as rehabilitation which is an integral part of exploitation. If the legislator had intended to equate the rehabilitation of illegal mines with interventions for economic exploitation, it would not have defined the concept of rehabilitation of an illegal mine and the concession in such rehabilitation separately in the law. There is no doubt that the new ZRud-1 was intended only to simplify such procedures, from planning to implementation, bearing in mind that this is the mineral resource most widely used in Slovenia and that there are a very large number of illegal mines in Slovenia which need to be rehabilitated in an appropriate manner. Of course, it is not permissible to equate illegal mines where the perpetrator is known and is ordered by an inspection decision to be rehabilitated at his own expense with the rest, where the rehabilitation is to be paid for from the excavated raw material.In order to resolve the situation, we propose that, pursuant to Article 35 of the Mining Act, instead of requiring a certificate, the opinion of the local community should be required, as was the case under the previous law (see Article 15(3) and (4) of the Mining Act). However, the existing certificate should only apply to cases of economic exploitation. Such a requirement should be specified in the new Article 35(6), which should read as follows: 'Notwithstanding the provisions of the preceding paragraph, the land of an extractive area shall be deemed to be in accordance with the land-use planning documents if the competent authority of the self-governing local community in whose area such an area is located issues an opinion that the planned rehabilitation of the illegal mining site is in accordance with the original intended use of the land, which was in its land-use planning documents prior to, or at the time of, the occurrence of the illegal mining site'.
Taking into account the proposed amendment, it is also necessary to amend the provision of Article 40 of ZRud-1 in so far as it determines the content of applications for mining rights. In the first paragraph, under point 2, after the words 'with its spatial planning acts', add 'with the opinion of the local community in whose area the proposed extraction area of the area of rehabilitation of the illegal mine is located' and, of course, many other provisions of the law should be amended in order to further simplify the procedure for this type of intervention, as is the case in the countries of western Europe, since it is unacceptable that they are treated in the same way as the procedures for the most valuable mineral resources. However, specific proposals could be made for the above, if the above proposal is acceptable. Independently of this, just for the sake of clarity, some of the provisions of the current law should also be supplemented or amended (e.g. the definition of rehabilitation of an illegal mine in Article 2.4.7) to make it clearer which rehabilitation is permissible (if the applicant is not the perpetrator of the illegal mine) and to what extent (e.g. in the case of an illegal mine, the definition of rehabilitation in Article 4.7). The same result could also be achieved by amending the by-law regulating the classification and categorisation of stocks. For the sake of clarity, Article 35(5) should also be amended in order to better define the content of the certificate to be issued in cases of economic exploitation as referred to in Article 34(2) of the Mining Act, otherwise the Ministry will continue to have the power to prescribe the content of the certificate by means of its own letters.
The proposed amendments to the ZRud-1 for illegal mines should be seen as a proposal to reduce and remove bureaucratic obstacles and as a proposal for green jobs, as stone cannot be transported over long distances (more than 20km).