Gabriel Resources is to axe 373 jobs, around 80 per cent of its workforce in Romania, citing “unjustifiably long delays” in the approval of the gold mining project at Rosia Montana, in central Transylvania.

“Instead of employing thousands of people as we were preparing to start building the mine, we now have to make 80 per cent of our employees redundant in an area where unemployment is very high and where there are no viable alternatives,” Rosia Montana Gold Corporation, RMGC, majority owned by Canada’s Gabriel Resources, said on Tuesday.

RMGC said the area faced a future of “degradation and depopulation” due to the blocked mining project and the lack of other investment.

Gabriel Resources, which has a licence to exploit the gold reserves through its subsidiary RMGC, obtained the permit around 15 years ago.

But it has since struggled to obtain all the required environmental and archaeological permits.

At present, the project is stuck in parliament without any clear timeline regarding a debate.

Last September, the government of Victor Ponta sent a bill to parliament to approve the project on digging for gold in Rosia Montana.

But weeks of protests sparked by environmental concerns, as well as claims that Romania would gain little from the deal, prompted the government to back down and send the law to parliament to change and approve.

The assembly then revised legislation for the mining sector, including provisions that would have applied to the gold mine.

The government can now choose to approve an entirely new bill for the gold mine, or parliament can draft new legislation at a later date. For now, the gold mine is on hold.

The company has always said it would use the latest environmentally-friendly technology and preserve Rosia Montana’s local heritage. It also promised to create thousands of jobs.

But opponents maintain that the planned use of cyanide to extract gold poses a threat to the wider environment of Rosia Montana and to nearby archaeological sites.

Historians and architects say fresh mining activity could damage ancient mine shafts in the area that date back to Roman times.