The first Mineral Policy in Poland was prepared in 1938. In that time The Mineral Policy was primarily dedicated to preparing Poland for a defensive war. The Central Geology Authority (CGA) was created in 1991. The main task of this Authority was preparation plans (annual and multiannual) of geological-exploration. The CGA’s activities were focused on enhancing the resource base of mineral deposits. As of 1985 the coordination of geological tasks is the main duty of the Chief Geologist of the country. In 1996 the Council of Ministers adopted a document called State policy in the field of mineral resources, prepared at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry as well as the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In 2015 a wide public discussion about the need to develop a mineral raw materials policy, initiated by the publication of three analytical documents prepared by the Demos Foundation, Professor J. Hausner and the Ministry of the Environment took place. Milestones in the development of a national mineral raw materials policy was the establishment of the special government’s plenipotentiary as well as the inter-ministerial team for mineral raw materials policy. In 2018, The Mineral Raw Materials Policy was transferred for public consultation. This document is the first document that is so comprehensive and holistic from the point of view of national mineral security interests. The Mineral Raw Materials Policy is based on 9 substantial pillars among them: economical and legal basis of mineral sector activities, investment risk, geological prospection and exploration, utilization of mineral wastes.

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.

The article concerns issues related to need of the introduction of protection prognostic areas, prospective resources pursuant to the new regulations of integrated development and space management in Poland. The article discuss the issues of actual and crucial documents and it also contains some critic and detailed analysis of the documents such as: the Responsible Development Strategy (SOR), Integrated National Development Strategy (ZSRK), Poland Integrated Development Strategy (SZRP). Author also analyzes whether the level of the implementation with the provisions motioned above is compliant with work in the committees reviewing issues in accordance with the work of the inter-ministerial teams for the updating and monitoring the strategy of development, set up at the Coordination Committee for Development Policy. The article indicates, among others, the increase of the legislative risk for the geological-mining or energy industry, the commodity sector. The risk may affect the crucial matters for the industry (functional areas, ICPs, the basis of their recognition in planning documents – taken into consideration as an element in the integrated management system of development). After all the analysis of the current provision, the article contains the summary with the main conclusions.

The article provides the external indications (both international and domestic) showing how important creating an appropriate mineral policy of the country is, especially in the context of mineral security. The current mandatory legal regulations referring to mineral policy and mineral security of the country were presented and discussed against this background, starting with provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, through the Strategy for Sustainable Development, Spatial Management Concept of the Country 2030 together with Action Plan, Strategy for Energy Security and Environment – 2020 perspective, Geological and Mining Law and other legal acts and implementing provisions, Action Plan “Raw Materials for the Industry” announced by the Minister of Development, the Concept for Mineral Policy presented by the Government Plenipotentiary for the Mineral Policy, and finally – project of the Urban and Building Code in the area of spatial development. In the case of documents being in the course of the proceedings, the current state of working on them is presented, also in the context of particular projected legal solutions for future regulations. The author indicates and justifies the need of accelerating the work and taking actions to prevent the currently appearing phenomena that may impede the execution of the raw materials policy and the protection of key raw materials in the future.

The assurance of future raw materials supply to the EU mineral industry has become, in recent years, one of the priority tasks of the EU Commission, geological surveys and several research centers. After many years of negligence, the problem of developing supply risk of many raw materials in Europe has been perceived, along with the menace to the EU economy competitiveness coming from dynamically developing countries such as China, India and others - basically of Asian origin. This has initiated a new mineral policy within the EU zone, referring mainly to non-fuels. One of the starting points for this activity has become the assessment of the EU mineral resources potential and identification of the raw materials that are critical for the harmonious and sustainable development and technological progress. The paper briefly presents the results of research work focused on the critical raw materials assessment, which were conducted by the Initiative for the Raw Materials Supply. Its core is the presentation of Polish mineral reserve base and its potential as a possible source of critical raw materials for the European Union. The criticality analysis was based on three categories, i.e.: economic consequences of the supply limitation, supply risk of reduction (fluctuation or disruption), and environmental risk referring to countries with weak environmental performance in order to protect the environment that jeopardize the supply of raw materials to the EU. For their quantitative assessment there were proposed three aggregated indices, while for the forecast purposes - 10-year period. The criticality ratio was determined for the 41 most important and most frequently used raw materials. On the grounds of the research made up to now, these raw materials were preliminary divided into three groups. As a critical to the EU economy, 14 raw materials of major economic importance were discriminated, i.e.: antimony, beryllium, cobalt, fluorite, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, magnesium, niobium, PGM, rare earths, tantalum, and tungsten. They are characterized by high supply risk, which is mainly due to limited number of their sources - dominated by a few countries, in particular China. The risk of supply disruptions is boosted by low rate of utilization of secondary sources, and limited scale of substitution as well. The majority of the above-mentioned raw materials are crucial for the new technologies development. The remaining minerals arealso - though to a lesser extent - imperiled with a supply deficit. Despite they are also of economic importance, their indispensability for the advanced technologies development is relatively smaller. Taking into account the raw materials that are critical for the European Union economy, Poland cannot be considered as its resource base. The source of these raw materials are not only scarce in Poland, but also they are not produced, and their demand is now - and according to forecasts is going to be in the future - met by imports. However, the role of our country as a manufacturer of finished products from components of foreign origin is anticipated to increase. The raw materials in question are not considered exactly critical for Polish economy, as any industrial branch based upon their utilization has emerged so far. Therefore, they are of limited economic importance. Presumable utilization of very limited sources of above-mentioned critical raw materials in Poland could be anticipated in a perspective of at least 20 years. The most probable in this respect are the following: opening out the new Mo-W-Cu ore deposit Myszków, and the promotion of exploration works for similar deposits.