The European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy is dragging its feet in answering allegations on its role in the selection of priority gas pipelines in the Western Balkans and Caucasus region. The delays threaten to diminish the chances of the Ombudsman’s findings being taken into account while developing new EU energy rules.
Our energy systems are a long way from alignment with the pathway to stay below a 1.5°C rise in global temperatures, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2021 report published yesterday.
Kenya energy project exposes the dark side of EU development funds
October 13, 2021 | Read more
A third of the European Investment Bank (EIB) portfolio in 2020 went through financial intermediaries, a channel that has already enabled multiple projects with devastating consequences for nature and communities with virtually zero accountability. The ongoing review of the EIB’s environmental and social standards is a crucial opportunity to ensure transparency and proper scrutiny of all projects supported with European public money.
EIB misinterprets EU’s development finance needs
October 12, 2021 | Read more
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has long been seeking to take a more significant role in the EU’s overseas development effort. But it has also been resisting calls to upgrade its policy on the environmental, social and human rights ramifications of the projects it supports.
The expansion of Budapest’s Ferenc Liszt International Airport, financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB), illustrates how big infrastructure projects are promoted at the expense of people and the environment, ignoring EU environmental requirements and the EIB’s own environmental and social standards. However, what is most striking about this case is the fact that a project with EU financial support, has ended up trapping citizens in miserable lives only few are able to flee.
The Western Balkans Green Agenda Action Plan: Quantity over quality
October 8, 2021 | Read more
This week’s EU-Western Balkan summit in Slovenia in the end resulted in agreement on a long-awaited Action Plan for the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans. But the climate and environment emergencies will not be solved by ‘indicative timeframes’.
