Romania’s Environment Ministry started an “emergency” investigation of an environmental permit issued by a regional authority for a gold mine project majority owned by Canada’s Eldorado Gold Corp. (ELD)

Environment Minister Rovana Plumb asked Romania’s National Agency for Environmental Protection and the Environment Clearance Authority to check whether the local agency for environmental protection in the western Timisoara county followed the law when it issued a permit for the Certej mining project, the ministry said in an e-mailed statement today.

The ministry will cancel the permit should it fail to respect the country’s regulations, according to the statement. Plumb also asked for the head of the local environmental agency to be fired because he failed to inform the ministry about the issuance of a permit for a project of “national and international interest.”

Non-profit organizations, including Alburnus Maior, issued a statement today challenging the permit for the Certej mining project, citing “an extremely dangerous precedent for Romania,” because of environmental issues caused by the use of cyanide in extracting the gold.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andra Timu in Bucharest at atimu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James M. Gomez at jagomez@bloomberg.net