Who is responsible? Laws and responsibilities of public authorities

In Germany, the extraction of natural resources is for example regulated by the Federal Mining Act (BBergG), which replaced the old mining law of the Federal States as well as numerous ancillary mining laws in 1982. The BBergG is complemented by various regulations on mining law matters. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is responsible for mining law within the Federal Government. The mining authorities of the Federal States (see figure 1) implement the law and are responsible for approving and supervising mining activities, depending on the mineral resources. For certain natural resources not covered by the BBergG, some federal states have adopted their own regulations for these landowners’ natural resources in the so-called Excavation Law of the federal states.

With regard to their legal regulation, a distinction is made between three groups of natural resources in Germany (see figure 2):

• Free-to-mine natural resources are not the property of the landowner. The exploration and extraction of these mineral resources is subject to the BBergG and requires a two-stage application procedure: in the first step, the granting of a mining licence (public-law concession) and in the second step, the site-specific approval via the operating plan procedure, in each case by the competent mining authority of the affected federal state.
• Privately-owned natural resources are owned by the landowner and are subject to mining law (see Section 2(1) number 1 BBergG). The exploration and extraction of these mineral resources do not require a mining license, however they require approval in the operating plan procedure by the competent mining authorities of the affected federal state.
• Landowners’ natural resources are all natural resources that are not free-to-mine or privately-owned and are owned by the landowner. They are not subject to mining law and are therefore not supervised by the mining inspection authorities. Instead, the approval procedures with regard to the landowners’ natural resources are carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG) or in accordance with provisions of state law (e.g. Excavation Laws, Water or Building Law, Nature Conservation Law).

Depending on the federal state, natural resource and type of extraction, middle and lower-management levels of governmental bodies are responsible for the latter group of landowners’ natural resources.

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