On 10 July 2020, the City of Zrenjanin issued the third illegal construction permit to the investor Linglong International Europe doo, this time for the second phase of construction of auxiliary facilities within the tire factory complex.
On 20 July 2020, RERI filed a complaint to the Secretariat for Energy, Construction and Transport within Autonomous Province, emphasizing that the permit was issued contrary to the regulations. RERI requests from the Provincial Secretariat to withdraw the illegal permit.
The construction permit, as in the previous cases, was issued by an incompetent authority. The permit from 10 July 2020 was issued for auxiliary facilities that are in the function of the main facility – tire factory, and without the main facility, the factory itself, these facilities would not even been constructed (recreation centre for employees, parking, etc.).
The construction permit wrongly states that the Investor submitted a decision that an environmental impact assessment is not required for these facilities. Before mentioned decision does not exist, since the City Administration of the City of Zrenjanin suspended the decision-making process on the requirement of an impact assessment on 7 May 2020. The Law on Environmental Impact Assessment does not recognize and does not provide for such procedure. The city administration was obliged to carry out the procedure by issuing a decision that an impact assessment is required or a decision that an impact assessment is not required. It shall be recalled that in this illegal procedure, the city administration rejected 215 objections of citizens and associations, claiming that they were not founded.
Therefore, the investor could not submit a decision that an environmental impact assessment is not required, as stated in the permit, because he does not possess the decision.
The location conditions, which are an integral part of the construction permit, do not contain the conditions of the nature conservation issued by the competent Institute, which violated the Law on Nature Protection and the Regulation on Location Conditions in the procedure of issuing the disputed construction permit.
Issuance of construction permits for the construction of a tire factory in Zrenjanin, contrary to the regulations, causes the highest degree of concern and therefore RERI calls the institutions of the Republic of Serbia to start complying with the regulations, and calls the citizens of Zrenjanin to use all available legal tools to put pressure on city authorities to stop abusing public authority and issuing illegal decisions.
The procedure for issuing construction permits for the tire factory in Zrenjanin, which was declared as project of public importance of the Republic of Serbia, is a typical example of avoiding the application of environmental regulations, which only increases the concerns of citizens of Zrenjanin about the possible impact of this project to the environment and human health, especially having in mind other environmental problem in this area that citizens of Zrenjanin have been facing for years.