Greek Gold: From Resistance to Dependence in a Halkidiki Mining Region

It was January, yet only one apartment was vacant in Megali Panagia, according to the listings on Greek rental websites such as Spitogatos, Spiti24 and Tospitimou.

The property was a maisonette with electric heating. The price? 1,500 euros per month.

“If you’re workers, it can accommodate two,” said the proprietor when this reporter called to ask about the property’s availability.

By ‘workers’, she meant the Romanians, Bulgarians, Croatians and others from the Balkan region who have occupied this village and others in the northeast of Halkidiki, a region of northern Greece best known for its three peninsulas that jut out into the Aegean.

They are among the more than 3,000 construction workers who pour into the site of the nearby Skouries gold mine every day ahead of the expected start of production this year.

Skouries open pit, Mount Kakavos, in January 2026. Photo: Alexandros Avramidis.

The influx of foreign subcontractors has transformed the villages around the wider Cassandra Mines complex in northeastern Halkidiki; once catering to tourists, these villages have been monopolised by construction companies.

Fifteen years ago, when Greece’s then government approved an investment plan for the Skouries mine, it met with fierce resistance from local residents and environmental activists. In 2012-2014, there were riots.

Unswayed, Canadian Eldorado Gold, operating through its local subsidiary Hellas Gold, gave the green light to full construction in 2021, and the following year it secured financing of 680 million euros. The local resistance gave way to acquiescence in the face of a far larger and more powerful foe. The economic backdrop was also far from favourable to the plan’s opponents.

“Many who were against the mines now work there,” said a second-generation miner from the coastal village of Stratoni, a half-hour drive from Megali Panagia, both villages part of Aristotle Municipality. “Not because they were stupid before and became smarter later. They were crushed.”

He was referring to the burden of the Greek debt crisis that erupted in late 2009 and ravaged the local economy for years to come; job opportunities were few and far between, and the government was desperate for investment.

Now, in northeastern Halkidiki, life goes on according to the rhythm set by Hellas Gold. Under the surface, dissatisfaction remains rife.

Fears for the environment

A wall painted with the slogan “NO TO GOLD” in Megali Panagia. Photo: Alexandros Avramidis.

Mining activity in northeastern Halkidiki dates back centuries.

In the municipality of Aristotle, the Cassandra Mines complex itself dates to the end of the 19th century, and was bought by Hellas Gold in 2003.

Locked out of international lending markets and forced into successive rounds of dramatic spending cuts to right its finances, in 2011 the Greek government approved a proposal by Hellas Gold to scale-up the Skouries gold and copper mine with an open-pit mine and a new ore processing plant.

Local residents were not so sure, and the ensuing conflict was one of the most divisive of the decade.

Environmental groups warned about the effects of deforestation on Mount Kavakos, the risk of groundwater contamination and the long-term management of mining waste. Alarm bells rang over the threat to the region’s ecosystem and a local economy heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture. Protests, court battles and political confrontation ensued.

The dispute was never fully resolved; the project simply advanced and became one of the region’s main sources of employment, while swelling public coffers.

Many residents who once opposed the investment eventually found themselves economically tied to it.

In villages across northeastern Halkidiki, apartments, hotels and rental homes that once catered primarily to tourists are increasingly occupied by construction workers, driving up rents and pricing out locals.

There is still the odd holdout.

A construction company offered the owner of a hotel in Nea Roda, at the top end of the easternmost peninsula, 60,000 euros a year to host 20 workers. The owner, a woman known to oppose the mine expansion, told BIRN about the offer and said she declined.

Concern over long hours, coordination

House of the Professional Union of Underground Miners at the Cassandra Mine. Photo: Alexandros Avramidis.

Union representatives say the use of so many subcontractors, the hours they work, and the safety measures in place are all cause for concern, heightened by the death of a 63-year-old subcontracted worker at the Skouries site in May 2025 and an incident in March this year in which a Romanian man was seriously injured and hospitalised for several weeks in intensive care.

Of the 63-year-old, the Professional Union of Underground Miners of the Cassandra Mines said: “He had been working 10 hours a day for months, often six days a week, even at that age.”

It attributed the more recent incident involving the Romanian national to a lack of…