On 29 May 2024, the Council of Ministers issued a decision extending, on an “exceptional basis”, the authorization for five cement companies to extract the raw materials required to meet domestic market needs for one year. The decision was proposed by the ministers of industry and environment and based on the authorization-extending mechanism adopted in Council of Ministers Decision no. 5 of 15 February 2022. The Council of Ministers thereby resurrected a decision that the State Council had previously nullified on 20 April 2023 because it contravenes Decree no. 8803 of 2002 (the Quarries and Crushers Regulation). The Council of Ministers did not forget, once again, to link this illegal approach to its intention to introduce amendments to this decree (even though it is presently a caretaker government), as though the existence of government intention to amend a regulatory text is enough to invalidate its content. The decision also emphasized that the government respects Lebanon’s obligations and the international treaties it has signed with regard to conserving the environment and achieving sustainable development, as well as its compliance with the Ministry of Environment decisions and circulars related to environmental monitoring mechanisms and rehabilitating environmentally degraded sites.

This decision constitutes a clear mutiny against several decisions issued by the State Council in recent years (19 and 20 January 2022, and 15 March 2022) to nullify government decisions granting administrative grace periods to operate quarries. It also ignores the great efforts by the Lebanese Army and the Ministry of Environment itself to establish the extent of the infractions committed by quarry operators, especially the cement companies, and the accumulated monetary sums that they consequently owe, which the Ministry of Environment has estimated to be approximately USD2.5 billion. Now, the Ministry of Environment itself is proactively granting the cement companies an illegal privilege to operate the quarries for an entire year, thereby relinquishing the ability to invoke Decree no. 8803 of 2002 against these companies and forsaking environmental protection and the interests of the public treasury in its critical hour.

This is what we shall detail below.

The System of “Administrative Grace Periods” to Violate the Law

The first noteworthy aspect of this decision is that it restores the system of granting “administrative grace periods” to violate regulatory laws. Under this system, the government allows itself to grant, to parties it decides (the five cement companies), special privileges to violate the law for a certain time. This system was set up in the 1990s on the pretext of the demands of reconstruction following the 1975-90 war and the absence of a text regulating the quarries sector. Remarkably, the government continued to grant these grace periods after the regulatory text – namely Decree no. 8803 of 2002 – was enacted. Successive governments continued following this system of providing cover for the crushers’ infractions on the same pretext (market needs), justifying ignoring the decree on the basis that it is unimplementable or that they intended to amend it, as previously explained.

While the government never explained the factors that obstruct the decree’s implementation or that justify taking many years to amend it, the argument about construction needs is debunked by the figures for concrete exports and by the large number of empty apartments. A study by Beirut Urban Lab shows that the vacancy rate is very high in Beirut (23%), particularly when it comes to luxury apartments (over 50%).[1]

With this behavior, the government is reaffirming its orientation towards keeping the crushers and quarries industry, and the cement industry in general, as a sector outside the law, one in which operators must please the forces that granted them the privilege to contravene the law or else lose it. This leads to monopolies, the benefits of which are divvied up between these forces.

The Council of Ministers Resurrects a Decision Nullified by the State Council and Abets a Crime

This normalization of infractions is especially egregious because the State Council has issued four decisions nullifying government decisions in this regard. These decisions came in cases filed by the Federation of Koura Municipalities in cooperation with the Legal Agenda and Earth Will. The Council of Ministers not only repeated the aforementioned violation but also went as far as to openly cite the mechanism adopted in its Decision no. 5 of 15 February 2022, which the State Council had nullified explicitly because it violates Decree no. 8803. Thus, the insubordination of the Council of Ministers has reached the point of resurrecting a decision that is null and void, all in open violation of the separation of powers and binding nature of judicial decisions issued “in the name of the Lebanese people” (Article 93 of the State Council Statute). That is, of course, in addition to the fact that its decision constitutes a grave violation of society’s rights to a sound environment.

The State Council has also explicitly held in some of its previous decisions that the granting of administrative grace periods in this manner effectively constitutes government abetment of unlicensed quarry operation, which is a crime punishable with up to three years of imprisonment under Decree no. 8803.

Forsaking Both the Environment and the Treasury

While the “government’s” granting of this exclusive privilege is a continuation of its previous approach, its decision today is unique in that it confers the privilege on parties that have now been found, via a study by the Ministry of Environment and the United Nations Development Programme, to owe the state at least USD2.3 billion. This figure represents the value of the compensation that crusher operators must pay to the state for the volumes extracted by the sector between 2007 and 2018.[2] It does not include the fines and associated interest for tax evasion, nonpayment of fees, or unlicensed operation. Nor does it reflect the environmental and health crimes that they committed, including deforming the environment and polluting the water and air. The study relied on the Lebanese Army’s field survey of all the crusher, quarry, and sand-pit sites, which the 2019 Budget Law stipulated so that the volumes extracted from them could be determined and the amount owed could be calculated. Following this report, the Ministry of Environment held a broad participatory session, in coordination with the Cases Committee and others, about collecting the treasury’s dues. 

While nothing is known about the measures subsequently taken, it is clear that the Ministry of Environment has granted the new grace period (a full year) to the cement companies that owe the bulk of the aforementioned debt in the absence of any proof that it has collected a single cent of it. In other words, the Ministry of Environment has forsaken not only its fundamental responsibility to conserve the environment but also the rights of the public treasury, which it previously boasted about exerting much effort to collect in cooperation with the army. Moreover, the ministry has made this move at a time when the state is still scrounging for the resources that it desperately needs, as evidenced by the recent European aid package and the heated debates that surrounded it.

This article is an edited translation from Arabic.

[1] Christina Abou Rouphaël, “How Can Land and Property Taxes in Lebanon be Fair?”, Public Works Studio, 2024.

[2] Ali Swaidan, “Death Quarries: Has the Day of Reckoning Arrived?”, The Legal Agenda, 2023.