Miners are threatening to protest in Bucharest after Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said all coal groups would be closed.

Manu Tomescu, vice-president of the Rovinari Energy Union, wrote on Facebook: “This is the first time that a Romanian prime minister declares that he will give up coal energy production! It should also tell us clearly what social and economic measures the Romanian Government will take, in the context of the tens of thousands of jobs that will disappear following the abandonment of coal-based electricity production! ”

The trade unionists are asking the government for measures to mitigate the social impact in the coming years and announce that they will “defend” their jobs. “People are dissatisfied, worried, because if they run out of jobs, they have no alternative here in Olternia. 8,000 jobs have been lost over time, we still have a little over 12,000,” said the vice-president of the Rovinari Energy Union, Manu Tomescu, at Antena 3, according to financialintelligence.ro.

Regarding the prime minister’s statements, “they say that they will switch some energy groups from coal to gas, but they will still lose jobs in the mining part. There will be a few jobs left in thermal power plants that will be switched to gas, but very few.”

“Beyond that, we still have a very big concern. During this time, when we are out of jobs, because the Romanian state has made those commitments in the European Union, to reduce pollution, at present, Romania imports electricity from Serbs, Ukrainians, countries that are in outside the EU and coal-producing countries. In other words, you leave your Romanians without jobs, you send them home, but at the same time, through the laws given to us in Romania, electricity is imported also based on coal,” explained the union leader.