Romanian president visits Roșia Montană mountain town, famous due to anti-mining protests

Romanian president Nicușor Dan, accompanied by his family, visited the mountain village of Roșia Montană and the Roman galleries there. During the visit, he stressed the need for real tourism projects for the UNESCO site. The area is known for its gold deposits, and became famous in 2013 due to a series of protests against aggressive gold-mining practices.

Tourists would have all the reasons needed to visit the area. There are over 150 kilometers of galleries in the depths of the four mountain massifs around Roșia Montană, as well as 7 kilometers of Roman-era gold mining galleries.

Specialists claim that the mines at Roșia Montană were exploited 150 years before the occupation of Dacia by the Romans.

During the visit, president Dan noted that the heritage site needs to be included in the local tourist attractions.

“It would be shameful to have a UNESCO site that everywhere in the world brings money and not be able to highlight it,” said Nicușor Dan.

He also restated his goal to encourage Romanians to visit their country, according to News.ro.

In the early 2010s, the locality of Roșia Montană became known due to a development project by Canadian company Gabriel Resources, which sought to exploit the area’s gold deposits. In 2017, a technocratic government headed by Dacian Ciolos filed for the historic site to be included in the UNESCO list of protected sites. In 2021, the site was included on UNESCO's World Heritage list, ending the gold mining project.

A protracted litigation eventually gave the Romanian state as the winner, sending the shares of Gabriel Resources, which cited billions in losses, into a downward spiral.

Since then, however, no tourist development project has been announced in the area. Nicușor Dan addressed the problem, signaling the need for private investors.

“I don’t have the economic calculation, but thinking intuitively, it cannot be done without the private factor. I cannot estimate how much the restoration of the buildings in Roșia Montană would cost, but probably around EUR 100–200 million. The most logical thing is to enter into a public-private partnership, to concession them,” said Dan.

“What we are experiencing in Romania is that we are not lacking ideas, but action plans; that is what we are missing, and what I can do as president is to bring specialists for important things in Romania to find some action plans,” he added.