To: Mr Kelemen Hunor - Romania’s Minister for Culture and National Patrimony

Dear Minister, We are writing to you today because we are deeply concerned by recent declarations regarding the state of Rosia Montana’s permitting procedure. We consider that there exists a misleading debate surrounding Rosia Montana’s exceptional patrimonial values which as you know, are acknowledged on the national and international level. The values of the Rosia Montana site are inscribed in Romania’s laws that protect its cultural patrimony. Hence the Romanian state through the ministry which you represent should act by developing policies to protect this heritage instead of paving the way for its destruction. In the past months the disregard for the presence of this patrimony - which should be protected and not destroyed – has intensified in a previously unseen manner and has given rise to many questions which we hope you will now clarify. It is with great concern that the will expressed recently by the representatives of the Romanian state, among whose we can find the ministry you represent, is the same one with the mining company’s will, Rosia Montana Gold Corporation that proposes the exploitation project in Rosia Montana and firstly wants the project authorization’s procedure to be finalized. It is well known that, in the past, you publicly declared that maintaining or abrogating the historical monument status of all mining galleries situated in Carnic Massif from Rosia Montana represents a vital decision that should be adopted by the competent authorities during the authorization procedure of the RMGC mining project. The ministry that you represent, through its territorial department in the Alba County, already issued on 2011, July 14th the archaeological discharge certificate no. 9/2011 that discharged the whole surface of Carnic Massif, except Piatra Corbului. The Ministry is well aware of the fact that the certificate no 9/2011 for Carnic Massif is object of an invalidation judicial action1, since you recently declared the ministerial order for the removal of the Carnic massif from Romania’s List of Historical Monuments cannot be issued until resolving the litigation regarding the legality of the archaeological discharge certificate mentioned before2. Despite all these, recent declarations made by representatives of the Ministry of Culture and by the mining company Gabriel Resources place your declarations in a completely different light and raise legitimate questions. During the special edition hosted by the public television on February 23rd, the state secretary within the Ministry of Culture, Mr. Vasile Timis, declared that “The ministry must and, more than that, it’s compelled to say what is there, what are the preservation methods or , if the case, to issue or not the avis, after the Archaeological National Commission and the National Commission of Historical Monuments analysis. I want to say in a simple manner that this decision is conditioned by a political decision, and, obviously, it is conditioned by the decisions and the points of view from various ministries […] I and other colleagues from the patrimony department elaborated another documentation that expresses conditions and what RMGC and the other responsible institutions have to do. At the moment it is at the minister and we wait a decision very soon […] I want also to point out, a known aspect I think, that recently the government doubled the royalties, and I must say that sometimes we have to take into account in out controversial attitudes the usage at the European structure level with the compromise that doesn’t compromise. Here I would recommend the Valetta Convention to be taken into consideration, which specifies that the polluter pays, and I think that Gold Corporation assumed this […] A monument becomes a monument after its analysis within the National Commission that expresses a scientifically opinion which is converted into an administrative act through ministerial order. In the same way, we proceed with the removal of a monument’s protective statute.” In short time after this official declaration of the Ministry of Culture, the mining project’s owner, Gabriel Resources, published an activity report3 that reads: “Significant progress has been made in July 2011 with the issue of an archaeological discharge certificate for the Carnic open pit (“ADC”). In order to end the protective archaeological regime covering the proposed site of the Carnic open pit, RMGC now awaits formal confirmation that the Carnic massif has been removed from the List of Historical Monuments by the National Monuments Committee and the Minister of Culture”. All the above-mentioned declarations were extensively presented because we want to solicit a series of extremely important explanations on the mentioned aspects. We understand that at the present moment there is a file compiled specially for the Carnic Massif to be removed from the List of Historical Monuments. Is this the political decision that the state secretary, Vasile Timis, referred to? We ask you to elucidate the notion “political decision”, as we are confronted with a rather unusual terminology regarding authorization procedures undertaken by administrative authorities. We also understand from the same declarations of the state secretary that the Government’s recent decision to double the royalties is in direct connection with the “political decision” to be adopted soon on the removal of Carnic’s protective regime. This aspect implies supplementary clarifications. Is this “political decision” conditioned by the doubling of the royalties to be paid to the Romanian state following mineral resources exploitations? We also ask you to elucidate the applicability of the “polluter pays” principle – generally understood as a number of administrative and financial measures through which the owner of an activity with significant impact on the environment is kept to avoid producing negative consequences on the environment, but also to remedy environmental damages generated by its actions/inactions. If you consider that this principle can be applied to resources of cultural patrimony, we solicit you to communicate us how the harms suffered by the cultural patrimony – not regenerative by its nature – can be remedied. Lastly, we are kindly asking you to elucidate the full list of administrative bodies, commissions and specialists with a concrete decision-making role in removing the Carnic Massif’s protective regime and clear timeline as to when we could expect this decision to receive your final endorsement. Yours sincerely, Eugen David President Alburnus Maior