In April, Ana Colovic Lesoska – founder and executive director of Eko-Svest, the North Macedonian environmental research and advocacy organisation – received the Goldman Environmental Prize for stopping EBRD and World Bank financing of hydropower projects in North Macedonia’s Mavrovo National Park. 

Throughout 2019, Bankwatch supported efforts to open the Initiative for Coal Regions in Transition to broader stakeholder involvement and contributed to shaping the EU’s EUR 1 trillion Multiannual Financial Framework. 

We also helped secure the cancellation of EBRD loans for the Balkan expansion of Ukrainian poultry giant Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP) following community complaints, and successfully pushed the EBRD to strengthen protections against reprisals in its updated safeguards policy. 

In September, Montenegro officially cancelled the Pljevlja II coal-fired power plant project, previously considered for funding by Czech and Slovak export credit agencies. 

In November, signalling a major shift in EU energy policy, the EIB announced it would end financing for fossil-fuel energy projects by the end of 2021. 

But perhaps the most significant decision of 2019 came late in the year with the European Commission’s launch of the landmark European Green Deal, aiming to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. 

In the same month, Bankwatch published the first edition of our ‘Comply or Close’ publication series, exposing chronic breaches of air pollution limits by coal plants in the Western Balkans.