In German mining law, the obligation to conduct an environmental impact assessment is based on a rather obscure set of rules within the Federal Mining Act and the Environmental Impact Assessment Act. This essay analyses basic issues with regard to the environmental impact assessment and its systematic integration in the German mining law. While the environmental impact assessment aims at the consideration of environmental aspects at an early stage of the administrative proceeding, the administrative procedure licencing mining projects decides issues layer by layer and step by step. Considering the extremely long period of duration of a mining project, a sufficiently certain prognosis of all environmental aspects is impossible. Additionally, the environmental impact assessment is part of a planning approval, which concentrates, in principle, all legal and planning issues of a mining project in one complex administrative procedure. Thus, the difficulties providing a reliable prognosis of the environmental impact exacerbate.