Münster (dpa / lnw) - The last pending lawsuits against the Garzweiler lignite mine have reached the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Münster. According to a spokeswoman, two out of three complaints dismissed by the Aachen Administrative Court have received appeals from the OVG. In the lower court in September, a plaintiff from Lützerath was unsuccessful. He wanted to prevent his property from being sacrificed to opencast mining.
However, the administrative court did not see any legal standing because the plaintiff had only acquired the undeveloped meadow property after it had already been decided that Lützerath would be cleared for opencast mining.
At the beginning of October, the Green-led economics ministries in the federal government and North Rhine-Westphalia agreed with the energy company RWE to phase out coal in the Rhenish Revier by 2030. Five largely abandoned villages at the opencast mine are to be preserved and Lützerath is to be dredged for coal extraction. Local activists want to prevent that.
