“Something isn’t right” in way Portugal’s AD government is railroading people’s lives in favour of foreign big business – Portugal Resident

Lawyer Ana Inês Patrício has exposed the chilling way in which Portugal’s AD government is treating an entire population in northern Portugal.

Up until now, lay readers might still have been under the impression that the heroic ‘people’s fight’ in Covas do Barroso (to stop open pit mining for lithium destroy ways of life and the local environment) was somehow a NIMBY (‘not in my back yard’) situation – a community simply digging in its heels against developments ‘for the good of the country’ because they will most certainly leave the rural backwater considerably worse off. But it is so much more than this – and Ms Patrício’s opinion piece in Expresso this week, gets to the nub of the issue, in language that everyone can understand.

As she explains, what is happening now in Covas do Barroso will decide more than the future of a rural community. It will decide what it means, in Portugal, in 2026, to be an owner of private property – and how far the Portuguese State can go to serve a private interest, dressed up as being a public one:

“On May 6, 2026, a decree was published in Diário da República, the government’s Official Gazette, that should have caused more of a stir than it did. It declares the public utility of an administrative easement in favor of British company Savannah Resources, so that (Savannah) can enter 24 plots of land in Covas do Barroso and Romainho, in the municipality of Boticas. Two hundred and twenty-eight hectares of land, with a term of one year, starting immediately.

“The owners of those lands did not agree. They were notified, had 10 days to respond, and they did, and no one said yes. Neither the private owners, nor the common landowners, nor the council, nor the civic associations. 

“The government decided (in favour of Savannah Resources), anyway.

“And this is the second time this has happened. The first was in December 2024, and there was an injunction suspending the work for two weeks (…) demonstrations on the hill, photographs of seventy-year-old people keeping watch in order to prevent machines from entering their properties. 

“For seven months, between the end of 2023 and the middle of 2024, a small village in northern Portugal endured alone what should have been a genuine public debate, with time, calm, and transparency. Instead, there were only official decrees.”

The lawyer returns to what she calls the ‘technical part’ – the explanation of what is an administrative easement.

“An administrative easement is a measure provided for in the Expropriation Code and in separate legislation, which allows the state to impose on a private owner the obligation to tolerate the temporary use of his/ her land by a third party, in the name of public utility. 

“The property does not change hands. The use is restricted for a period and there is a right to compensation. 

“If the owner disagrees, he/ she can only resort to the administrative courts. Which take a long time.”

The “administrative easement was designed for situations in which the collective interest is evident. Running an electrical cable, opening a water pipeline, providing access to a public work. Things in which the benefit to the community does not require detailed argumentation because it is, in essence, communal.

“Savannah Resources is not a community. It is a London-listed company with investors spread across Europe, whose lithium is destined for the European battery industry and whose profits go to shareholders. The taxes that the Portuguese State will receive are yet to be calculated, and according to independent analyses circulating, they are much less than the official discourse suggests. The promised jobs are five hundred in the short term and three hundred in the long term, in a mine whose estimated lifespan does not exceed seventeen years.

“And in the name of this, the government decrees public utility.”

This is where the iniquity of the situation becomes unavoidable: “Who is the public utility for? It is not for the village of Covas do Barroso. It is not for the farmers, the beekeepers or the livestock owners who have lived there for generations, nor is it for a region classified as World Agricultural Heritage by the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation, of the United Nations). These all suffer impacts – and there are four ‘not insignificant’ water courses potentially affected, all the way downstream: the rivers Covas, Beça, Tâmega and Douro.

“I want to say this as clearly as possible, because this seems to be the essential part of all this,” stresses the lawyer.  “Public utility, in this case, is public utility for a foreign private company. 

“This should concern anyone who has read the Constitution carefully, regardless of their political affiliation (…) if this doesn’t raise questions for those in government, perhaps the problem is bigger than it seemed.

“There is one thing that needs to be acknowledged. This easement functions, in practice, as an instrument of pressure on landowners to sell. The company needs approximately 840 hectares for the complete project and, according to data from two years ago, had managed to buy or was in the process of buying just over 90. The others don’t want to sell. They are within their rights, guaranteed by the Constitution. Thus the administrative easement comes into play precisely when private negotiation has failed. (It was not decreed) to resolve a collective emergency, but to unlock a private business venture that could not move forwards.

“That is not the spirit of the law. It is something else entirely.

“And the owners, in order to oppose it, have to go to court. Judicially challenging a ministerial order is expensive, slow, it requires a lawyer, it requires time, and above all it requires health to endure the whole thing. 

“The people affected by this situation are mostly elderly, living off small farms. On the other side is a multinational company with offices in London and international venture capital. The asymmetry explains itself.

“And even so, last year, the people won. An injunction was granted and work stopped for fifteen days (…) It means that the Portuguese courts, when they listen calmly, realise that something doesn’t add up here. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has also realised this. In April 2024, it requested the annulment of the Environmental Impact Statement (paving the way forwards for Savannah) issued in 2023. The case continues (in the courts). And meanwhile, the government issues the second easement…

“From a democratic point of view, this is serious: An entire population says no, the local government does the same, a civil association is organising resistance, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is contesting the environmental basis of the project, and the courts have already ruled in favor of landowners in an injunction. Yet the government continues to push a foreign company onto land that doesn’t belong to it.

“The justification we hear is always the same, and I understand why it’s presented this way. The energy transition. Lithium. Batteries. The future. It sounds reasonable to even ask what, specifically, is being done in the name of that future. Because the way it’s being done here, in Covas do Barroso, suggests that the energy transition can only happen at the expense of villages, rivers, and farmers. As if there were no alternatives. As if sustainability were only measured in tons of ore extracted, and never in what is destroyed to extract it.

“I am not opposed to lithium. I am opposed to this. To the method, to the haste, to the idea that a decree can declare public utility to favor a foreign private company against the unanimous will of those who live there. I am opposed to a government that acts as an arbiter when it has been a party for a long time.

“It is worth asking a question (…)  If this can happen in Covas do Barroso, with 228 hectares and 24 owners, what prevents it from happening anywhere else in the country, whenever a company with sufficient capital decides that it has an interest in private land? It prevents nothing. The figure is generic, the interpretation that the government gives to it is elastic, and the precedent has been created.

“In Covas do Barroso, more than just the future of a village is being decided. It is what it means, in Portugal, in 2026, to be a private owner, and how far the state can go to serve a private interest disguised as a public one.

“The law serves to protect the citizen from power. Not to hand him/ her over to those with more money.

“In Covas do Barroso, this seems to have been forgotten.”

To be fair, it seems to have been forgotten by the government, by the European Commission. Not by the people themselves. They are still fighting. On Wednesday, May 26, the Comunidade Local dos Baldios de Covas do Barroso*, in Boticas, lodged an injunction with Mirandela’s administrative and fiscal court, to suspend the second administrative easement, which they stress is “disproportionate, poorly justified and seriously damaging to the rights of co-owners, communal lands, water resources, biodiversity and the agro-silvo-pastoral way of life of Covas do Barroso.”

*Comunidade Local dos Baldios de Covas do Barroso is the community of producers whose livelihoods depend on the use of Covas do Barroso’s common lands, which are designed for use by the community.

Source: Expresso