Updates on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Chelopech gold and copper mine Bulgaria – EBRD AGM Issue Paper

After visiting Chelopech TMF in October 2008, members of the Petition Committee of the European Parliament report an ‘immediate threat to public health, water, soil and agricultural production, and the climate conditions in the region’ posed by the Mining project. Their report recommends further investigations by EC and Bulgarian Government and calls for implementation of EU environmental law and basic rights and principles.

Bubbling under the surface: The role of western public finance in the crisis hitting central and eastern Europe

The financial and economic crisis unravelling across the world economy has fundamentally changed economic policy imperatives for states and international financial institutions, including those operating at the European level. This situation offers the opportunity to articulate policies favourable to progressive social and environmental aims as integral parts of effective and transformative plans for economic recovery. While todays policy makers are unlikely to be moved by such arguments at this point, broader layers of social actors engaged in debates about the crisis most definitely will. This report seeks to provide guidance for their mobilisation by considering the context, formulation and delivery of crisis response policies by the EC, the EIB and the EBRD in relation to the CEE economies.

Bankwatch Mail 40

In this issue: Nabucco spells energy securitisation not security * Crisis puts the EBRD back in the same old business * EBRD complaint mechanism gets a personality * EBRD drawing more power lines in Ukraine’s unsustainable energy sands * An end to energy efficiency excuses in Ukraine * Flagship PPP road project to be built with state money * ArcelorMittal – Going nowhere slowly * Hopeless in Gazela * New Gazela documentary * More dirty energy development for Albania * Smoke on Georgian water privatisation * Faster, smarter but more destructive crisis money for CEE?

ArcelorMittal continues to pollute and uproot peoples lives

ArcelorMittal needs to move beyond good intentions on environmental and social improvements and turn words into deeds. Despite its rhetoric on social responsibility, the company continues to destroy the environment, risk peoples lives and displace local communities, according to a new report launched today by the Global Action on ArcelorMittal coalition to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Luxembourg.

ArcelorMittal: Going nowhere slowly. A review of the global steel giant’s environmental and social impacts in 2008-2009.

This new report reviews the company’s environmental and social impacts during the years 2008-2009 since the coalition Global Action on ArcelorMittal published its first report on the company in May 2008. The new report includes case studies from Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, India, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Romania and South Africa.

Chelopech gold and copper mine Bulgaria

Only four months after the Board of Directors at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) had approved an increase to the original loan for the Canadian Dundee Precious Metals Development for its Chelopech gold and copper mine in Bulgaria, the Petitions Committee at the European Parliament deemed the situation at the mines tailings dam as alarming during the site visit on 29 October 2008. The questions to be asked are what is happening on the ground and on the basis of what information the EBRD decided to extend the financing for the Chelopech mine.

Bankwatch Mail 39

In this issue: Earth calling the IFIs – Take me to your added value * Countdown to Copenhagen finds the EU stuck in limbo * Wind frozen and trees cut in Latvian crisis measures * The penny starts to drop on PPPs * Oil, gas and the IFIs: Sketching some lines on the horizon * Landmark legal victory compels Ex-Im Bank and OPIC to get real on their fossil fuel lending * Transparency fever gripping the World Bank?

Quality review of the EIA for the Porto Romano thermal power plant

This independent quality review of the Environmental Impact Assessment study highlights more than 25 shortcomings in the assessment, including the studys failure to: consider alternative energy scenarios to coal power; analyse properly the carbon dioxide emissions; assess the socio-economic impacts of the project and provide for management and monitoring plans. Based on this quality review as well as the opposition from the local communities the Municipality of Durres declared itself officially against the project in April 2009.

Comments on the EBRD Project Complaint Mechanism – Eduardo Abbott

The former Executive Secretary of the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, Eduardo Abbott’s comments on the EBRD’s first review of its accountability mechanism.

Second complaint to Supreme Administrative Court regarding Chelopech mine