The closure marks the country’s exit from coal production and leaves Poland as the only remaining coal producer in the European Union. “What you see is history,” observers said as production at the final Czech coal mine came to a halt. For miners, the shutdown is bittersweet. “It is sad that it's ending because the work is good, I am not going to say otherwise. Hard work but good work. I could work here for five more years. It is what it is,” said Grzegorz Sobolewski, a Polish miner who worked at the Stonava mine. The primary reason behind the closure is economic. Extracting coal at depths exceeding 1,000 meters has become increasingly expensive, while global coal prices remain low. “Global coal prices are low, while our costs to extract coal from ever greater depths… are becoming higher and higher,” said Roman Sikora, General Director of OKD, the mine’s operator. The shift in the Czech energy mix has also played a decisive role. In 2000, coal accounted for 72.4% of electricity generation. By 2025, that share had fallen to 35.2%. “Demand for hard coal in the Czech Republic has dropped very sharply. Electricity generation… is no longer dependent on coal,” Sikora added, noting that heating plants are rapidly switching to gas and biomass. While Poland remains the EU’s last coal producer, it too is gradually phasing out coal, with its final mine scheduled to close in 2049 under a government-union agreement.