On the outskirts of the city of Karviná in the coal-rich Czech region of Moravia-Silesia is located the Church of Saint Peter of Alcántara. Mining activity has caused the building to sink some 37 meters and tilt nearly 7 degrees to the south, earning it the nickname the “leaning church”.  Karin Lednická’s popular trilogy of novels by the same title recounts the fate of the church and tells the story of the people in the area’s mining colonies, where many other buildings have developed cracks, sunk, and collapsed. In the second half of the 20^th century, the old town had to be demolished gradually as a result and rebuilt elsewhere.

Within sight of this much-visited heritage site, a heated debate is brewing around the future of Karviná. As Czechia prepares to phase out its last deep coal mine, plans to turn the area into an industrial zone are stirring opposition, and populist politicians are trying to bank on social discontent.

Conflicting visions

The effects of coal extraction are starkly visible around the Czechoslovak Army Mine in Stonava, a municipality in the Karviná district. The dead, “lunar” landscape is interspersed with sludge ponds, and artificially recultivated green spaces with trees that intersect with rusty piping. Underground pipes installed to allow methane to escape from the old tunnels stick out from the surface. And the remains of old streetlamps tower above water-filled depressions in the ground.  Much of the coal industry’s waste ended up in these areas, which used to have thousands of inhabitants. Now, the dumps and sludge ponds will be waiting for years for land reclamation to start.

Together with Jan Lenart, a geologist from Ostrava University who specialises in undermined landscapes, we are scouring through demolished houses and old roads amongst the remains of the old town of Stará Karviná. The visit is a unique experience, and not just for fans of the Leaning Church trilogy. Thanks to the process of spontaneous succession (the natural recovery of an ecosystem, without human intervention) and the fact that many areas have been lying fallow, the area resembles an open-air museum.

Locals have also come to appreciate the value of this changing landscape. In summer, many flock to the shores of the “Karviná Sea” – the lake created as a result of mining depressions – to swim or attend cultural events.

For more than seven years, Lenart has been mapping the territory in order to lay out a vision for its recreational and touristic use. He is planning bike paths, hiking trails, and historic sites. However, the geologist laments that public authorities lack a clear vision of what to do with the landscape in its post-mining phase. According to representatives of the Moravian-Silesian Investment and Development Agency, the area is ready for construction: it is well-networked with water and gas pipelines and roads, even if the ground surface is still settling.

But fragmented ownership of the land makes it difficult for public authorities to plan its future. Asental Land (owned by Czech billionaire Zdeněk Balaka), a real estate group owning the largest share of the Karviná area, is eager to turn it into an industrial zone. In addition, American development company Panattoni has presented a plan to “attract top-notch investment” and “return thousands of jobs” to Moravia-Silesia, where employment has been negatively affected by the phaseout of coal.  If this plan goes through, prefabricated halls will soon be visible from the leaning church.

However, these proposals have sparked opposition from conservationists and locals, who are not eager to see new industrial buildings replace the old mining complex. The construction plan might also clash with one of the strategic projects of the Just Transition Mechanism, an EU policy framework aimed at alleviating socio-economic impacts in the areas that are most affected by the transition to a low-carbon economy. The project in question is the POHO Park Gabriela, named after a former coal mine and designed for visitors who seek rest and relaxation.

Industrial glory and decline

Ostrava, the capital of the Moravian-Silesian region, is known as the “steel heart” of the Czech Republic. Black coal extraction, dating back to the late 18^th century, powered the establishment of Vítkovice Ironworks in 1828 and enabled the development of the Austro-Hungarian railway network.

Before then, the predominantly agricultural population relied on wood from the nearby Beskydy forest. Local artisans were aware of the existence of black coal long before the Karviná-Ostrava basin became one of the most important mining sites in Austria-Hungary and played a fundamental role in the industrial development of the entire monarchy. The volume of extraction grew throughout the 20^th century. Even World War II did not lower the region’s productivity, although mining equipment was damaged.

By 1946, the Communist-led government had nationalised a total of 32 mines, nine coking plants, 10 mining power plants, ironworks in Třinec and Vítkovice, farms and forests, and several other industrial enterprises in the region. With annual production volumes increasing and the mining industry failing to comply with safety regulations, fatal accidents occurred regularly (for instance, the death of 108 miners at the Dukla mine in 1961 as a result of a fire). From the 1960s onwards, mining activities accelerated, until they reached a peak in 1979 with 24.1 million tonnes of coal mined. Since 1982, production has been in steady decline.

As demand for coke rose and salaries grew, many young men and their families came to Moravia-Silesia. Mining soon became associated with a sense of pride, even though some workers – i.e., political and other prisoners –  ended up in the mines as a punishment. A coal-fired heavy industry took shape in the area, and new towns were built or expanded around it – including Karviná. Air pollution was one of the side effects: as recently as the 1990s, Ostrava was famous for its intense smog.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the coal industry underwent a rapid decline. The government compensated laid-off miners and started large-scale retraining courses, which have successfully continued to this day. But these offers have failed to resolve all the challenges facing the Moravian-Silesian population, which has driven the population to emigrate to other regions en masse.

Adéla Gajdicová, a student and young journalist from Moravia-Silesia, recently asked her peers why they weren’t planning to remain in their native region. Some pointed to the subpar quality of education, while others mentioned factors like low pay, lack of interesting work opportunities, or insufficient support for entrepreneurship. Social geographer Ondřej Šlach says that half of those leaving the region are between 19 and 30 years old.

By the year 2080, one-third of the 1.1 million current inhabitants of Moravia-Silesia are predicted to leave it, most of them young people. During just the first month of 2025, more than 6,500 residents moved away, most often from the Karviná and Ostrava area. The population is ageing, and buildings, streets, and whole housing estates are being demolished.

The wave of privatisation that followed Czechoslovakia’s transition to democracy negatively impacted communities that were already struggling due to industrial decline. In 1990, the 43,000 housing units that formerly belonged to the Ostrava-Karviná Mines (OKD) – the largest housing holdings in Central Europe – were privatised. Billionaire Zdeněk Bakala took control of them, along with the commercial structures, land, and recreational real estate.

Bakala never kept his promise of selling the homes to their tenants at affordable prices. Eventually, in 2020, the units were sold to Heimstaden, a Swedish real estate firm. Residents complain that Heimstaden not only keeps raising rents on the units – driving up rental prices in the region as a whole – but it also does not communicate well with tenants. The situation is mirrored in properties Heimstadem owns elsewhere, for instance in Berlin or in the Swedish city of Malmö. In an interview with Czech media outlet PageNotFound, a co-founder of the Stop Heimstaden initiative complained about “regular raising of the rent, short-term contracts, poor maintenance, the impossibility of ever connecting directly with somebody from the firm”.

In 2024, one of the tenants brought the case before the European Court of Human Rights after the Czech courts found no wrongdoing in the privatisation process. The case is still open. Meanwhile, the Bakala Foundation is trying to rebuild the reputation of its owner in the region, for example by offering scholarships and other activities for talented students. This year, municipalities began buying back housing units from Heimstaden at significantly higher prices than they were sold, but even so, the company remains Czechia’s largest landlord.

Ostrava and its surrounding areas have one of the highest concentrations of socially excluded localities – second only to the Ústecký region, another former coal-mining area. More than 20,000 inhabitants, including children, are living in social exclusion in the Moravian-Silesian region. The towns of Karviná and Orlová are consistently placed at the bottom of Czechia’s quality-of-life rankings, often alternating for last place.

Ostrava and its surrounding areas have one of the highest concentrations of socially excluded localities – second only to another former coal-mining area.

Campaigning on disaffection

Meanwhile, opportunistic politicians are trying to bank on social discontent. Former prime minister Andrej Babiš will be the right-wing ANO party’s front-running candidate for Moravia-Silesia in parliamentary elections in October. The party is leading the polls, and Babiš has good chances of being elected premier again.

Although he was born in neighbouring Slovakia, Babiš has claimed that he has a historical relationship to the “unique” region. The former prime minister claims credit for the construction of a bypass around the city of Frýdek, and for “saving” OKD after Bakala stripped the mines’ assets. At the same time, he has professed his love for the Jeseníky Mountains – despite facing criticism for his government’s failure to address a devastating bark beetle infestation there. And in recent months, Babiš has often been photographed attending cultural events or wearing the jerseys of local sports teams from Moravia-Silesia.

What brought the populist former premier to the region is mostly its untapped electoral potential: turnout in the last parliamentary election stood at 60 per cent – 10 percentage points lower than in Prague.  “We need as many of you as possible to come to the polls here,” declared Babiš, whose campaign events are well attended by both pensioners and younger people. He has often used these gatherings to speak against EU policy and praise US President Donald Trump.

Babiš says Czechia is corrupt and that Moravia-Silesia has been robbed. The region’s inhabitants have no doubt that the latter claim, at least, is correct, as the political representation of the region has undergone one scandal after another. However, Babiš tends to omit the fact that his party is also entangled in these scandals.

Last year, former Moravian-Silesian governor Jan Krkoška left the ANO movement after being convicted of bribing doctors on behalf of the pharmaceutical company he was working for. In the months following Krkoška’s downfall, vice-governor Jakub Unucka (from the Civic Democratic Party, ODS) resigned after being charged in a regional scandal for influencing the distribution of public tenders in exchange for bribes. ANO is currently governing the region in coalition with other right-wing and far-right parties.

Missed opportunities

Populist narratives find fertile ground in a region that, after centuries of supplying coal to the country and beyond, has yet to forge a new identity. Can the Moravian-Silesian community truly move on from coal? Workers still hold ceremonies honouring their mining tradition with their work uniforms, and they pay homage to colleagues who perished in mining accidents.

The Leaning Church brought stories from the coal region to thousands of readers who now travel there to photograph it. The former steelworks in Dolní Vítkovice have also found a second life as a venue for music festivals, cross-country skiing, firefighting competitions, and other events for smaller and larger communities. This year, for instance, world-famous singer and songwriter Sting performed against a backdrop of rusted pipes in Ostrava. Still, the touristification of industrial heritage is not replicable everywhere and is not enough to guarantee a prosperous future for the people of Moravia-Silesia.

At the same time, regional leaders, the mayors of former mining municipalities, and private investors remain fixated on the idea of attracting a single large employer that can provide thousands of jobs – as demonstrated by the Panattoni Smart Park project in Karviná. The Just Transition Fund was meant to offer an alternative path, enabling a green transformation that would protect the most vulnerable. However, the 10 projects sponsored by the scheme in Moravia-Silesia lack a unifying vision and often fail to address the real needs of citizens.

To address this problem, the Centre for Business, Professional and International Studies (CEPIS) – still under construction in Karviná – is encouraging residents participating in its courses to establish their own enterprises. The IT sector promises to bring new opportunities and higher-than-average pay, and some former miners are seizing this opportunity by retraining. The 2020 documentary A New Shift, which follows a miner trying to become a computer programmer, shows that this process is far from easy. While initiatives like Trautom – which provides education and advisory services – aim to help former coal workers find new career paths, the image of laid-off miners as victims of the transition still dominates Czech media.

The Black Cube library, whose construction started this spring in the centre of Ostrava, is another project supported by the Just Transition Fund – one aimed primarily at promoting culture rather than technology. Upon completion, the building will resemble a block of coal surrounded by a moat. The design, however, is more than 20 years old, which might explain the high energy intensity of the building. “Its seven floors will be full of opportunities waiting to be discovered,” the director of the project tells me, without providing much detail. He says part of the project’s funding has been earmarked as small grants for the activities of local nonprofit organisations.

But the project is also facing criticism. Zuzana Klusová, a social worker and a local politician of the Pirate Party, thinks the library is a waste of resources. “Are we telling poor children from Karviná they have to travel to a library that costs almost 82 million euros in the centre of Ostrava, which would take them an hour by public transportation, when they do not even have a telephone at home from which they could call the child safety hotline?” she asks ironically.  

The politician believes there are more urgent challenges to address in Moravia-Silesia. Together with the NGO S.O.S. Karviná, Klusová campaigned against the expansion of coal mining. Now, in collaboration with another NGO – Let’s Save the Karviná Railway Station – she is working to transform the disused station into a drop-in recreational club for children and youth. Trains no longer run on the tracks as mining has made the subsoil unstable. She laments that the Just Transition Fund cannot be used to support such projects, even with relatively small sums of just a few hundred thousand crowns.

When asked why she continues to live in an area that is often visited by journalists looking for images of “the worst place to live in Czechia”, she replies:  “Life is not worse here than it is anywhere else. We have our acquaintances, our families, our friends here. We are building a community garden near the railway station; for Saint Nicholas Day, we organised benefit rides and carolling on a little train car covered with Christmas lights there. Sometimes I tell myself we should leave, but we are staying just the same.”

Klusová claims that local citizens associate the Just Transition Mechanism with costly and extravagant projects that are far removed from their needs. One of these initiatives is EDEN Silesia, a 102-million-euro project supported by the fund for the conversion of the Barbora mine. Its aim is to create a research, educational, and commercial park designed as a group of massive greenhouses and laboratories. However, the construction of this tropical jungle in Karviná has been postponed indefinitely due to the lack of preparedness as well as objections from European evaluators. “Do you comprehend that you are discussing this type of project in a town where abandoned buildings are being demolished and where, during Advent, the debate on social media is about the theft of baked goods from people’s balconies?” Klusová asks rhetorically.

Meanwhile, Ostrava has lost one of its cherished community spaces, the Bauhaus. Between 2018 and 2024, the centre offered activities to Romani children, ran a mothers’ club, and functioned as a space for arts and culture. But the city administration decided to demolish the centre and convert it into a judicial complex to make it more lucrative. This happened despite the fact that the existing structure had won architectural awards and brought real value to the community. A new, smaller space called Placek is planned to replace the Bauhaus.

There will be life after coal

Civil society organisations oppose the building of an industrial zone next to the Leaning Church as well as a planned lithium battery gigafactory in Dolní Lutyně, near Karviná, arguing that Moravia-Silesia does not need more assembly plants for manual labourers.  “There is no interest here in that sort of jobs,” says Martin Bohoněk of Zachovejme Poolší (“Let’s Save Poolší”). “It is clear, therefore, that an investor will need to tempt a foreign workforce here. What kinds of problems will be addressed by that? They are building on the last green space in the area, but they will not be building homes, hospitals, or institutions of learning for it.” The gigafactory is planned to cover an area the size of 380 football pitches. For the Czech government, this is a strategic project, but locals overwhelmingly rejected it in a referendum in 2024.

In the Bedřiška colony in Ostrava, tenants have been complaining about an unjust transition for years amid the looming threat of eviction. Their Finnish-style single-family houses are slated to be demolished and replaced by new construction, even though the colony is one of the best examples of coexistence between non-Romani and Romani people in Czechia. The community achieved this feat without the aid of the government or any formally trained social workers, purely thanks to mutual solidarity and self-organisation. As Eva Lehotská, a member of the community, told Czech online daily Alarm: “What angers me most of all is that they are making it clear to us that there is no point in trying. People here have tried so hard, they started going to work, nobody here owes any back rent, the children tutor each other and have improved their school results, and because they are throwing us out of our homes, they are making it clear to us that all the efforts of the entire community, all the people here, were for nothing.”

In August, hundreds of climate activists – including members of Limity jsme my (“We Are the Limits”) – visited Bedřiška to show their support for local residents. These activists are among the few public figures drawing attention to the climate crisis in the Czech media. They call out the coal barons’ unfair practices and companies’ lack of decarbonisation plans, while also highlighting the social dimensions of a just transition that remain unaddressed.

This should come as no surprise. The Just Transition Mechanism was conceived as a way to mitigate exactly the sort of challenges that coal regions of Czechia – still often referred to as Europe’s “boiler room” – are facing, and to make sure no one is left behind. But so far, Moravia-Silesia’s transition has proven very complicated.

The region has been hit by successive corruption scandals involving regional representatives, has the highest proportion of socially excluded localities in Czechia, and features vast post-mining “lunar” landscapes. Regional strategies are too often created without meaningful input from those working on the ground – people trying to improve life for themselves, their neighbours, and the poorest. Instead, locals involved in civil society initiatives frequently find themselves at odds with municipal and regional leaders.

Within Czechia’s declining coal regions, there seems to be little appetite for large factory complexes. There will be life after coal here, but whether it will mean a good life for all is difficult to say.