The street won! Romania doesn't have to pay compensation over the Roșia Montană gold mine

Romania has definitively won the international arbitration case brought over the Roșia Montană (Verespatak) gold mine. The ad hoc committee of the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) rejected on November 13 the request of Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources to annul the March 2024 ruling. The company had sought roughly $6.7 billion in compensation from the Romanian state over the collapse of the mining project in Alba County, and now a decade-long case has come to an end; the decision was announced on Friday by the Bucharest law firm Leaua Damcali Deaconu Păunescu (LDDP), which represented Romania. There is no further appeal against the ruling: Romania will not pay compensation, and Gabriel Resources must reimburse the state's roughly ten million dollars in legal costs.

Gabriel Resources acquired the concession for Roșia Montană in 1999, where it planned to open Europe's largest open-pit gold mine. It intended to carry out the project through the Roșia Montană Gold Corporation (RMGC), a joint venture with the Romanian state-owned mining company Minvest, in which the Canadian company held the majority stake. According to the plans, cyanide technology would have been used to extract the gold and silver deposits from the mountains, four mountain peaks would have been removed, and a huge cyanide-containing tailings pond would have been built in the valley. For years, the project was the most important issue for Romania's environmental and civic movement; in the autumn of 2013, tens of thousands protested in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and other cities when the Ponta government tried to push the project through with a special law. Following the protests, parliament rejected the law, and the mine never received the necessary environmental permit. In 2021, Roșia Montană was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List for its Roman-era and medieval mining heritage, and at the same time placed on the list of endangered sites.

In July 2015, Gabriel Resources turned to ICSID, invoking the investment protection treaties Romania had signed with Canada and the United Kingdom. It originally sought $4.4 billion in compensation, which, with interest, grew to roughly $6.7 billion. The company argued that the Romanian state had blocked the investment for political reasons, thereby violating its investor-protection obligations. On March 8, 2024, the arbitral tribunal rejected all claims and ordered the company to pay Romania's legal costs. In July, Gabriel Resources filed a request for annulment, arguing, according to a report by Romania Insider, that two members of the tribunal, Pierre Tercier and Zachary Douglas, were not independent and impartial and had failed to disclose their relationships with the parties, including Romania's legal representative. Under ICSID rules, the request automatically suspended enforcement of the ruling, while the Romanian state, as a precautionary measure, had the shares held by its subsidiary Gabriel Jersey in RMGC seized to cover the legal costs. The European Commission also sought to join the annulment proceedings, but the ad hoc committee rejected this in August 2025.

Romania was represented by the Geneva-based international law firm LALIVE and the Bucharest firm LDDP. On LDDP's side, the case was led by Professor Crenguța Leaua, with Ștefan Deaconu also on the team, while Gabriel Resources was represented by the American firms White & Case and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Matthias Scherer, a partner at LALIVE, said it was an honor to serve the Romanian people and a great satisfaction to see Romania fend off Gabriel's excessive claims, while Leaua called the decision a well-deserved conclusion to a ten-year arbitration proceeding. According to its third-quarter 2025 report, published on November 28, Gabriel Resources is in a serious financial situation: at the end of September it had only CAD 1.7 million in cash against CAD 23 million in liabilities, and has been financing its operations through regular share issuances.

The Roșia Montană ruling closes one of the largest international investor disputes of the past decade, and for Romania it is not only a financial but also a political victory. Legally, it confirms the decision that was affirmed politically after the 2013 protests and later reinforced by the UNESCO listing: the mine cannot be built. A six-billion-dollar compensation payment would have amounted to a significant share of Romania's annual budget deficit, at a time when the government is trying to bring the deficit below the EU target through austerity measures.

The street won

Either way, there wouldn't even have been a Roșia Montană case if the university students of the time hadn't taken to the streets across the country. Out of that came the "Uniți salvăm Roșia Montană" ("United, we save Roșia Montană") movement, which later evolved directly into "Uniți salvăm România" ("United, we save Romania"), once it was no longer just Roșia Montană bringing people onto the streets, but also the corrupt governance of the PSD, the defense of Laura Codruța Kövesi at the head of the DNA, and the fight against corruption. This is how Romania's civil society grew stronger, a path marked all along by the downfall of prime ministers. Just remember how quickly Ponta resigned after the Colectiv tragedy: the crowd of protesters hadn't even reached Victoriei Square before the ink was already dry on the prime minister's resignation. It was this same civil society, born out of the resistance at Roșia Montană, that mobilized itself in practically no time at all when Grindeanu — now the PSD's top man — pushed through, in the dead of night, the government decree meant to let corrupt PSD members off the hook. Which, to no one's surprise, was published in the Official Gazette that very night, because there are countries — and Romania is one of them — where the staff of the Official Gazette keep night shifts. When I say we mobilized ourselves in a matter of moments, there's no exaggeration in that: on a freezing February evening, around minus twenty degrees, the frightening news came around eight o'clock, by ten o'clock the country was already in the streets, and we stayed there every evening and night until the government withdrew the notorious decree. That was the same week Puzsér announced a protest in Budapest against Russian influence, only to call it off because of the cold.

The Romania that won this international case is the Romania that we too helped build. The Romania that back then was in the streets, and which has by now grown tired, vanished, and above all become disappointed in the politicians it itself brought to power — those who promised to represent the idea of "vreau o țară ca afară" ("I want a country like abroad"), the fight against corruption. Then we were disappointed. We were disappointed in Iohannis, in Nicușor, in Dan Barna's USR, then in the USR in general, until the USR became just like the PSD when it knifed its own candidate, Lasconi, to help Nicușor instead. Now just look at all these thieves and fools in parliament, who have managed to produce a government crisis lasting almost half a year and still don't understand what the problem is. It's no accident that many of those who were in the streets back then are now AUR voters: that is simply how they are telling the system off. And this system really does need to be told off. Now, finally, it has happened. This victory is our victory too. So let's celebrate it, but above all, let's draw strength from it!

Ugar