Budapest airport torments neighbours as expansion project evades environmental checks
Blog entry | 11 October, 2021The 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.
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Trouble in the air: EIB ignores environmental and social burdens caused by Budapest Airport expansion
Publication | 11 October, 2021The Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport is located 16 kilometres from the centre of Budapest. With a licence for a capacity of 6 million passengers per year and 15 million in the peak year of 2019, new plans to develop the airport aim to increa
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Why can a third of European Investment Bank lending evade the Bank’s environmental and social rules?
Publication | 21 September, 2021The European Investment Bank’s (EIB) financial intermediaries (FIs) help the EIB to reach smaller clients than it would otherwise be able to finance. The EIB’s global lending via intermediaries amounted to EUR 22.6 billion in 2020. In the EU, credit li
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A third of European Investment Bank lending evades environmental and social rules
Blog entry | 21 September, 2021More than a third of the European Investment Bank (EIB)’s EU lending is carried out via intermediaries. Yet most of this money disappears into a black hole, with no information published about the final beneficiaries and no checks by the EIB about their environmental and social impacts. The EIB’s new safeguard framework is supposed to address this, but the draft text leaves the Bank far behind its peers.
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Joint civil society letter to EIB’s President Werner Hoyer on Bank’s Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework (ESSF)
Publication | 14 September, 2021Bankwatch, together with civil society organisations worldwide, is closely following the ongoing review of the EIB’s Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework (ESSF). In this context, we sent several joint CSO submissions highlighting concrete
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The EU Bank about to fail becoming a responsible lender
Press release | 6 August, 2021The European Investment Bank (EIB) is closing today the public consultation as part of the review of its Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework. A large group of civil society organisations (CSOs) sent today written contributions highlighting their disappointment with the EIB proposals, and calling for concrete actions to ensure that the EIB will operate as a responsible lender in the future.
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‘Highway of Destruction’ raises questions about effective and safe access to remedy and poor human rights safeguards at the EIB
Publication | 13 July, 2021This briefing summarises the information from the report Highway of Destruction, the result of research commissioned by CEE Bankwatch Network member group Polish Green Network and carried out by Kenyan researcher Naomi Barasa in July 2020. The study is
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How to ensure public control over projects funded by development banks in non-democratic regimes
Blog entry | 5 July, 2021In a series of video tutorials, we demonstrate tools civil society organisations and activists from Uzbekistan can use to have a say about projects supported by development banks that may affect their communities and the environment.
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NGOs letter on the EIB’s review process of the Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework
Publication | 24 June, 2021This joint advocacy letter, endorsed by 35 environmental CSOs, urge the European Investment Bank (EIB) to ensure a meaningful public consultation process during the ongoing Bank’s Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework review. We call on Ban
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Last call for EU bank to uphold UN treaty on transparency
Blog entry | 19 May, 2021For too long, transparency and public participation have been a low priority for the European Investment Bank (EIB). Now it appears the world’s largest international lender is even in breach of international environmental law on access to information and public participation.
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