The functioning of European economies and societies requires a stable and sustainable supply of mineral resources. For 10 years now EU has been developing raw materials initiative to secure European minerals supply. In many cases, areas with known or hypothetic mineral resources, are not sufficiently valued by society and authorities, remain unprotected and face competing land uses with the risk of becoming sterilized. MINATURA 2020 project was born out of a need to develop a harmonised framework which allow a common way of identifying “mineral deposits of public importance” (MDoPI) and their safeguarding via land use planning. The project has left a useful set of guidelines and proposals how to advance on the creation of a European network of MDoPIs to avoid sterilization of “deposits worth safeguarding”.

In Poland, the need for legal protection of mineral deposits has been discussed intensively in recent years. Various proposals aimed at better system of mineral deposits safeguarding, especially those which should be recognized as of public importance, have been proposed. However, until now only a few coal deposits were recognized as strategic. Currently, the Polish National Mineral Policy is under preparation. Its overriding objective is to provide access to the necessary minerals, also in the longterm perspective. It assumes among others activities aimed at protection of mineral deposits regarding land use planning system.

Paper presents scope and general results of MINATURA2020 project, with details on MINATURA2020 methodology implementation in Poland, Project of the Polish National Mineral Policy with its objectives and key pillars, position of MDoPIs in this Project, and – finally – expected future steps related to MDoPI safeguarding in EU and in Poland.

Every social group exhibits a need to make decisions that are binding for all its members and the participation of various interest groups in decision-making today is an integral part of modern political and legal thought as well as administrative processes. Recently, increased community engagement and greater awareness of the society with regard to the possibility of influencing the development on a microregion (commune) scale have also been observed. This often translates into problems in obtaining a social license for a given project, which is particularly visible in mining activities. However, obtaining such a license requires the involvement and awareness of many stakeholder groups on which a project will have a direct impact. It should be ensured that this engagement takes place at a very early stage of a given project. In the case of mining activity, which is possible only after obtaining appropriate licenses (exploration or exploitation), this involvement takes the form of public consultation. This is due to the legal conditions presented in the following article for 3 EU countries (Poland, Austria, Sweden) and Serbia. The analysis showed that participation is mainly at the level of consultation in all countries and is an important element of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure of the mining project, which is an important stage in obtaining a mining (less frequently exploration) license. Public consultations at the stage of spatial planning are also present and have a diverse scope. However, special attention should be paid to these as they are crucial for proper mineral deposit safeguarding. Stakeholders’ awareness of planning decisions taken by local authorities can be crucial for the fast path to obtaining both formal and informal concessions, which takes the form of social license to operate (SLO).