Is the coal transition in Romania a decline or an opportunity?

Malgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat, Vladimir Mitev, Mediapool, April 21, 2025

The drive from Bucharest to the Jiu Valley takes at least seven hours. In the last stretch before the train station at Petroșani, the train slowly makes its way through the Carpathian Mountains. During the day, passengers can admire the river gorges, mountains and valleys. But those leaving Romania’s capital on a winter’s afternoon pass through total darkness before the city comes into view. Just opposite is the Livezeni mine, one of the last four still operating in the region.

Mining began here in the second half of the 19th century. In socialist Romania, the whole life of the region was dependent on coal and energy production. Tens of thousands of people came from other parts of Romania to find work in the mines – dangerous, but more lucrative than most other working-class occupations.

Coal mining was essential for energy production in what was then Romania, so the miners felt of great importance. In 1977, confident in their strength, they went on strike against longer working hours, lower wages and an increase in the retirement age. This alarmed the authorities so much that Nicolae Ceausescu visited the Jiu Valley, interrupting his summer stay on the Black Sea coast. Some of the miners’ demands were met, but the valley was turned into a closed zone, monitored by the Securitate.

“No one will really be left behind”

After the fall of Ceausescu, miners from the valley came to Bucharest to violently disperse anti-communist protests by liberal students. This gave them a negative image in post-socialist Romania, especially among urban elites. To this day, a monument to the victims of the Mineriadas stands a few meters away from the government headquarters in Victory Square.

At the same time, the special status of miners is disappearing. In the 1990s, instead of words about their indispensability, they heard phrases like “restructuring” and “necessary cuts”. In 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced that it would not grant Romania any more loans unless a series of reforms took place, including the liquidation of unprofitable state enterprises. Between 1997 and 1999, more than 20 000 miners were laid off. When they resigned, they received severance pay worth 15 to 20 months’ salary. But after spending that money, they have to fend for themselves on the open market.

In 2023, there will still be four mines and 2,000 people working in the Jiu Valley.

The Just Transition Mechanism’s motto is “Leave no one behind”. Launched in 2021 as part of the EU’s Green Deal mechanism, it aims to mitigate the economic and social impact of the abandonment of carbon-intensive industries in regions that depend on them. In 2022, the European Commission has earmarked €2.14 billion from the Just Transition Fund for six regions in Romania, including Hunedoara, where the Jiului Valley is located. But the main problem is that the measures aimed at preventing mass unemployment and increasing poverty come years after all this has already happened.

No vision for transition

“A just transition in Romania? So far it’s a missed opportunity,” says Corina Murafa, a leading expert on decarbonization and structural change. “We lack a common and coherent vision for transition. Despite the availability of funds, there are attempts to delay the transition process and statements that it is too early to phase out coal,” she points out.

Murafa believes that industrial regions like the Jiu Valley, deeply affected by the transition from a planned to a market economy, need government support to create strategic roadmaps for a new transition and to attract new investors. But none of this has been forthcoming.

“Not much has happened in the last year,“ comment Alin Tănase and Andrei Crăciun from Greenpeace Romania. They explain that as far back as 2023, there has been talk about the opportunities that decentralized energy production would bring for the creation of energy communities among citizens. However, a call for proposals to fund such projects has not yet been announced.

Both are convinced that red tape is hindering the transition. Although the money was supposed to be spent in the regions, the transition management body just operates within the ministry of European funds.

“Every policy change has a direct impact on the program. People come and go and things stagnate,” they summarize.

Exchange bureaux, gambling dens and second-hand shops

Alexandru Kelemen has seen the consequences of the coal industry’s decline first hand. As a social worker, he has seen unemployment, disillusionment, domestic violence and alcoholism take their toll. To this day, he sees people leaving the valley in the hope of a better life in Timisoara, Cluj or abroad. But he hasn’t given up hope yet.

Kelemen is president of the Association for Integrated Territorial Development (ADTI), a coalition of NGOs based in the Jiu Valley. He strongly believes in the EU philosophy of decentralization and citizen-led change. So far, some 20 SME projects have been selected to receive around €30-35 million for expansion.

When discussing life after coal mining in the Jiu Valley, tourism comes to the fore. About 1/3 of the business projects supported are related to the construction of tourist facilities. However, ADTI is interested in diversity, and funding will also reach the manufacturing sector. In March 2025, Monsson, a major player in the manufacture and assembly of components for the renewable energy plant market, announced that its new factory will be located near the former Petrila mine.

Kelemen believes that other former mining areas could also host new factories. Although land ownership issues have not yet been resolved, ADTI has started to draw up plans for the Lupeni and Lonea mines (which are still in operation in 2025) – some buildings are to be preserved as mining monuments and others adapted. This is not a utopia, but a strategy that has worked in several European countries.

Still, sometimes it’s hard to wait. One waits for the results of years of efforts. Then Alexander Kelemen could show his neighbors, who now sometimes say to him: you talk, you make projects, but you do not implement change.

He knows very well that this could indeed be the last moment to save the community in the Jiu Valley. If the younger generation does not see new jobs, a well-equipped hospital and affordable housing in isolated, modernized units, any dreams of a just transition will be killed by demographics.

A glance down the main street of Petrosani, the most important town in the Jiu Valley, reveals three dominant types of “economic activity” that demonstrate the region’s poverty. Currency exchange points clearly show that many locals go abroad and return with foreign currency, which they convert into lei. Second-hand clothes shops offer extremely low prices – a very nice shirt can be bought for 4-5 euros. Finally, there are probably dozens of places to gamble. Like churches, they exist in every village and smaller town in Romania. The poorer the place, the more gambling places there are. Petroșani is no exception.

Walking around town, you can meet young people, including couples with children. Not all have emigrated. There’s a theater where a Bulgarian director premiered on April 12. The town’s trump card is the university, which still focuses on mining technology.

Petroshani is part of the world, but is the world part of Petroshani? Can children now going to school in the Giu Valley find a meaningful life in their home town?

More questions than answers

For the miners made jobless in 1997, the just transition comes too late. It is also certain that the valley’s depopulation cannot be reversed. Even the most ambitious local economic development plans envision the creation of only a few thousand new jobs. Corina Murafa is under no illusions: neither the Jiu Valley, nor other regions qualified for Romania’s just transition mechanism, will become growth poles.

There are still more questions than answers. Will tourism really work as an alternative? Currently, there are only a few hotels in the valley. There are a few museums – the Mining Museum, the memorial house of the writer Ion Sârbu, the Humor Museum (or the Romanian installator’s museum – in Romanian installator means both plumber and person who makes artistic installations), the Miner’s Rescuer’s Museum, etc. The latter is located in the former Petrila mine, made famous by the documentary Planeta Petrila (2016).

It shows how locals and activists from all over Romania created a cultural movement and successfully fought against the demolition of the closed mine, which was eventually declared a historical monument.

“Petrila’s only chance is the cultural one”, says engineer, cartoonist and founder of the Romanian Plumber’s Museum Ion Barbu, one of the key figures in this struggle. But he is already tired. He has left the Planeta Petrila association. He says that today the Savior Miner Museum occupies only a small part of the mining site. The rest belongs to the County Council.

The movie Planeta Petrila conveys the compelling and inspiring message that successful resistance through culture is possible not only in socialism but also in capitalism. The movie also offers a veiled apology to the miners in the Jiu Valley for the use of brute force in the Mineriadas against protesters.

But ten years later, the fighting spirit of the cultural movement seems to have ended. Those who hold political power and economic ownership, not necessarily creative citizens, will ultimately decide what will happen to the monument mine. Ion Barbu is now considering whether the Ion Sarbu Memorial House can find international partners – similar memorial houses for writers in Poland and Bulgaria.

Money for hotels instead of miners

Alin Munteanu, president of the Cartel Alfa trade union at the Oltenia energy complex in Gorz, is not an enthusiast for a just transition.

“Our region received several million euros. They went to build hotels, which doesn’t create many jobs. The miners didn’t benefit. Hotel owners received these funds,” he says.

When, during the campaigns for Romania’s 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, sovereignist candidates promised to reopen closed mines, he didn’t believe a word – unlike many other residents of mining regions. In the November 2024 presidential elections, later canceled, they voted for the sovereignist candidate, Călin Georgescu. But according to Munteanu, Georgescu tells everyone what they want to hear and has no idea about the realities of Romanian mining.

“It will take trillions of dollars to reopen the mines. Our excavators are from the 1970s. Does anyone have the money to buy new ones?” he asks.

Romanian unions have negotiated compensation for miners whose jobs will disappear. But these decisions have nothing to do with the Just Transition Fund. Munteanu can’t even imagine getting his hands on the fund’s resources. For him, it would mean that his organization agreed to destroy jobs.

“There is no coherence between closing environmentally harmful sectors and integrating workers into other sectors. It’s hard to believe that a miner will find a job as a barber or pastry maker after the Just Transition Mechanism has financed some businesses,” said Florian Marin, president of the Federation of Free Trade Unions of Romania. “The mechanism should create jobs when they are needed. It is useless to fire a miner and offer him a job two years later. And nobody in Romania has thought of comparing these things,” he emphasizes.

Zero funding for small firms

By the end of 2024, Romania has planned to spend 26.5% of all its Just Transition Fund allocations, well below the European average of 38.1%. Again, 0.1% of available funds have been spent by the end of 2024. Following the first call for funding for SMEs, the next funding opportunity for small businesses was launched in February 2025 for €200 million. But at the same time the political context is changing.

Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Energy Secretary Sebastian Burduja said he preferred a “smart deal” to a “green deal”. He said “green policies” are an ideology blindly followed that is costly for everyone – economically, socially and strategically.

He openly clashed with environmental NGOs. After a US court ordered Greenpeace to pay $660m to Energy Transfer for an alleged “illegal and coercive scheme to cause financial harm”, he called on all directors of national energy companies in Romania to seek maximum damages in court against the NGOs that have sued them.

Green vs. brown at local level too

The contradiction we saw in Romania’s canceled presidential election of 2024 – between the pro-NGO tendency (then supporting Elena Lasconi) and the sovereignists (then voting for Călin Georgescu) – can easily be felt in the Jiu Valley. On several occasions I heard from local residents that the EU wants to deindustrialize its peripheral regions. At the same time, at one of the museums, we were told that there are more than 30 NGOs active in the Jiu Valley and the number is growing. So the Jiu Valley is a little Romania in which pro-European and Eurosceptic forces, green and brown energy advocates are competing.

With the just transition mechanism, countries and regions with good absorption practices and quality public institutions have been given a new chance to win. Those who need more help continue to struggle, and the lack of short-term results fuels frustration – both among engaged citizens trying to make a difference, and among those waiting and wondering what will happen to their jobs, their cities and their families.

Decarbonization is a change as sweeping as the 19th century, which catapulted the Jiu Valley into steam-powered modernity. Today, the memory of that transformation more than 150 years ago is preserved on the top floor of the Petroșani Mining Museum. There, you can see figures of the momarlans, the indigenous pastoral people whose settlements were replaced by mine shafts and mining colonies.

The idea of a just transition is a promise that the new period of change will indeed take into account the wishes of ordinary indigenous men and women, beyond the statistics of productivity and profit. Also, in a just transition, the mining areas should preserve the memory of their industrial identity, which can be felt in many places in the valley – including the memorial to the victims of the 20th century miners’ strikes that stands in Lupeni.

But as we write these words, Europe is talking more about security than about any large-scale projects that might ease the burden on the people. If the just transition ends before it gets off the ground, it will be another tragedy for the coal regions’ promised hope.

* This text has been produced with the support of Journalismfund as part of a larger journalistic project on Just Transition in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic in a comparative perspective.

Subscribe to the channel of the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” in YouTube, where a number of video and audio interviews are published! The blog can also be followed in Facebook and Twitter. Its Telegram channel is here. And here is its Substack account.

About Author