Highlights
[Highlight] Live from London – EBRD reviews its environmental and social policies
(April 15, 2008)
Read more about Bankwatch’s specific comments on the policies and watch the video online.
[Highlight] Is the European Investment Bank not telling us something?
(March 25, 2008)
These kind of schemes are becoming ever more common in central and eastern Europe, usually under the name public-private partnerships, or PPPs. Bankwatch is getting the word out on the perils of PPPs, and as this recent article in Bankwatch Mail shows, the World Bank itself has serious reservations about the prudence of promoting PPPs in CEE, yet this doesn’t appear to be stopping it and the other banks from getting behind a major roll-out of such schemes across the region.
[Highlight] Vlora citizens demand a referendum and a yachting harbour instead of an oil terminal and pipeline
(March 11, 2008)
[Highlight] Sakhalin II victory – who is now prepared to touch beleaguered project?
(March 4, 2008)
Petr Hlobil, Bankwatch's International Campaigns coordinator, paid tribute to “the outstanding, tireless work carried out in the last five years by Dimitry Lisitsyn, his colleagues at Sakhalin Environment Watch and Sakhalin islanders who have refused to capitulate to the environmental and social degradation that this badly designed and implemented project has unleashed on Sakhalin Island. Their rigorous project monitoring and incredible spirit are an inspiration to communities all around the world who find themselves with new, unwanted, socially maladjusted big oil neighbours. We wish them continued success in the fight to minimise the impacts on their communities brought by the fatally flawed Sakhalin II project.”
Read more reaction here to yesterday's announcement and what this entails for those financial institutions still deliberating on whether to sink project finance millions into a project where environmental irresponsibility shows no signs of abating.
[Highlight] “No more hazardous waste disasters in Zagreb!” demand local groups
(February 21, 2008)
The new incinerator, which may be financed by the European Investment Bank, is planned to be 38.5 times larger than PUTO (385 000 tonnes per year), and to produce up to 100 000 tonnes of toxic ashes annually. However there is nowhere in Croatia to dispose of this ash, and the project’s development has been fraught with irregularities. Read more.
[Highlight] Environmental failings of proposed high-speed motorway in St. Petersburg exposed by public impact assessment
(February 20, 2008)
The WHSD is to be an eight-lane 49 kilometre long road serving as part of the IX Pan-European Transport Corridor connecting Moscow and Finland's Helsinki. The USD 3.35 billion speedway is being pushed as a "strategic project" for the city and also touted as the first example of a public-private partnership in Russia. The project has already attracted the EBRD, the EIB, and the IFC all of which have said that they are interested in financing the construction.Yet, the implications of the project have been stirring a lot of unease among local people. Forty thousand residents of St. Petersburg have already voiced their protest in a petition against the project, saying that construction will violate their rights to a favourable living environment.
[Highlight] Might as well deal with it – Poland’s addicted to waste
(February 7, 2008)
Local communities living next to the planned incinerators, in particular in Krakow, are already struggling against these unwanted and ill-conceived plans. If realised, these incinerators would lock large areas of Poland into twenty years of waste addiction, killing all incentives for waste minimisation and recycling. Would you want to live downwind of such costly, polluting plants, which academic studies have shown spew dioxins, heavy metals like mercury, dust particles and acid gases such as sulphuric dioxide, all linked among other things with increased cancer incidence, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and adverse effects on the sexual development of children?
Alternatives are staring Poland and the EU in the face, as the Polish NGO letter clearly states. Addiction to waste via incineration can be cured, if the Brussels purse-holders take note, and action.
[Highlight] Vlora demonstrators tell World Bank delegation to pull out of disputed power plant
(January 22, 2008)
It is the second time that the Inspection Panel members have visited Vlora since local initiative group the Alliance for Protection of Vlora Bay lodged an appeal in April 2007. These huge energy developments have speeded ahead with next to no public consultation, and in recent months local residents have staged regular demonstrations and road blockades, accompanied by violent police crackdowns. The EBRD and the EIB are both also involved in the financing of the plant, a project that has been formally rebuked by the UN’s Aarhus Convention because of the extremely limited public consultations offered by the developers. More information about the Vlora Industrial and Energy Park is here.
[Highlight] They're at it again, but can the EBRD get its information policy on the up and up?
(January 10, 2008)
[Highlight] Vlora citizens' road blockade stops construction work on energy projects for eighth day
(December 31, 2007)
[Highlight] Geophysicist tells Commission about risky Belene nuke project - have you?
(November 20, 2007)
It’s not too late for you to join thousands of others and have your voice heard by the Commission. Have a look at what Professor Mörner has to say and get involved with Bankwatch’s most recent e-action!
[Highlight] Growth gremlins: EBRD hears the problems in CEE but appears disinclined to alter course
(November 14, 2007)
Take the massive levels of growth in Azerbaijan – 30 percent in 2007 – driven by an oil economy that has been wholeheartedly supported by the IFIs. However, as the EBRD concedes, Azeri inflation is expected to rise significantly to 16 per cent in 2007 from 8.3 per cent in 2006. Wasn’t the EBRD-backed BTC pipeline project supposed to bring sustainable development to Azerbaijan and the region? And rather than taking steps to address some of the hardships that have been foisted on people in CEE by “reform”, a clear message from the EBRD’s latest Transition Report is that “we hear the pain, but the reforming goes on.” Read more here about how things are not going according to plan in Georgia and Hungary.
[Highlight] Part-time approach to development must end at the EIB
(November 7, 2007)
[Highlight] Georgian Labour Party sues over EBRD-financed Tbilisi water project
(October 16, 2007)
The Labour Party argues that collective metering is a violation of citizens’ constitutional rights and that the price increase was approved without any analysis to show that it was necessary. The current legal dispute is part of a wider controversy about the “Tbilisi water supply improvement project”, financed with a EUR 15 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Read more here.
[Highlight] For 'reservations' read 'legal violations' – new Sakhalin II photo report
(October 12, 2007)
The company is hyping the AEA report as providing the project with a clean bill of health, although it is acknowledged that it contains some ‘reservations’ about the project. The latest photo report from Sakhalin Environment Watch, based on pipeline monitoring in September, presents more gory findings of locations where the integrity of the pipelines is threatened and Sakhalin’s rivers are being clogged up. The photo report shows alarming cases where legal directives intended to ensure pipeline safety have been ignored for up to a year by the company. We say unreservedly to the company and the potential lenders – these are legal violations, and how many more are out there?
[Highlight] Stuttering progress on sealing the EU funds deals
(October 5, 2007)
This is in flat contradiction with the EU’s own climate change and cohesion policy priorities. Final negotiations on the plans have been taking place between the states and the European Commission, with finalised agreements already reached in several countries including Hungary, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia.
[Highlight] Resistance to the Balkan pipeline carve up is growing
(October 2, 2007)
The meeting organised by Croatian NGOs including Zagreb office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Human Rights Center and Eko Kvarner took place in Sisak, the most polluted town in Croatia, thanks in no small way to a local unrefurbished oil refinery and a crude oil fuelled thermo power plant. Experienced and new campaigners were joined by legal and marine experts, and the meeting resulted in the establishment of an informal network and concrete plans for strengthening current campaigns on pipeline projects. Bankwatch outlined the potential involvement of the IFIs in these projects and, based on our experience of the problems in previous such projects financed by the banks, showed that the IFIs’ safeguard standards are no match for the social and environmental dangers of oil pipelines and related infrastructure. Read the declaration here.
[Highlight] Sliding slowly, expensively and still uncertainly to a Chernobyl safety solution
(September 25, 2007)
[Highlight] Appeal to the government of Poland concerning Rospuda Valley
(July 30, 2007)
When it became a member of the European Union, Poland took on the obligation of following European law. As it has been designed by the authorities, the present routing of the Augustow bypass has been questioned by the European Commission. A final judgment on this case will be given by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
[Highlight] More contempt for EU law from Polish government, but groups still confident of Rospuda victory
(July 18, 2007)









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