The year marked 13 years of Bankwatch campaigning to protect Bulgaria’s Kresna Gorge – an ecologically vital Natura 2000 site – against the threat of motorway construction. 

Early in the year, Bankwatch worked intensively to raise concerns about the proposed Nabucco gas pipeline connecting Turkey and Austria, highlighting the environmental and geopolitical risks of EIB and EBRD involvement in the project. 

In cooperation with our Macedonian member group Eko-Svest, we launched a campaign to safeguard Mavrovo National Park and the critically endangered Balkan lynx from destructive hydropower developments. Through a combination of formal complaints and public mobilisation, we successfully pressured both the World Bank and the EBRD to withdraw their funding, helping to protect one of Europe’s biodiversity hotspots. 

In May, at the EBRD Annual Meeting in Zagreb, Bankwatch drew attention to the climate impacts of fossil-fuel financing, with anti-coal activism emerging as a central issue. 

After years of advocacy dating back to 2005, the EBRD began implementing its Gender Action Plan in 2010 – a long-overdue but welcome step towards addressing gender inequality in its operations.