Blog entry

On Evgeny Vitishko, multilateral development banks and the criminalisation of public criticism

On September 24, the Krasnodar Regional Court rejected the cassation appeal filed by the Prosecutor’s Office against the sentence of Evgeny Vitishko a Russian civil society activist known for his criticism of the environmental damage caused by the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Vitishko was charged with a fabricated crime and sentenced to a three-year prison term in a penal colony in February this year.

While the court’s ruling is condemnable, it is sadly predictable. Russia is infamous for using and amending existing legal and judiciary instruments to scale up restrictions on civil rights groups and individuals critical of the regime.

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What is alarming is that this approach is becoming a modus operandi in more countries and not only among authoritarian regimes but also where transition to the Western type of democracy is at stake. Under the disguise of protecting national security and stability governments have curbed fundamental rights and freedoms and thus eroded the possibility for an open political debate.

Geographically, this mostly involves Former Soviet Union countries and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – regions where international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the World Bank have committed to enable a successful political and economic transformation. A very short overview of cases of legal interventions enabling the reprisal against rights and freedoms shows that these are introduced with increased frequency despite the IFIs’ presence and EU attempts to support democracy.

Politically motivated online censorship and surveillance

Due to its potential to be the freest space for communication and access to information, the Internet has become a target for restrictive measures. In its annual report assessing the rate of disruption to freedom of information through online censorship and surveillance, Reporters without Borders ranked Belarus, Turkmenistan, Russia and Uzbekistan as the “Internet enemies” states because of systematic repression of Internet users. Egypt, Kazakhstan, Tunisia and Turkey are listed as “countries under surveillance” for using draconian measures to control freedom of expression online.

The news broke last week that Turkey has amended a law to allow the state telecommunication agency to block websites without a court order as a means of protecting public order or preventing a crime.

Around the same time, the Egypt government has contracted a domestic sister of a US Blue Coat cyber company to procure the surveillance technology that enables the tracking of online communication. While the Ministry of Interior rejected the rumours, it has admitted it has been monitoring online communication to be on the top of political issues and electronic crimes.

Restricting foreign aid

In less developed countries, civil society groups depend on foreign funding to exercise their independent role. The governments of Russia, Egypt and most recently Hungary have waged war against civil society criticism by obstructing access to financial aid from abroad. In 2012, Russia approved a “foreign agents” law which tightens controls over civil society groups that receive foreign funding. Egypt has been pondering a law which would oblige NGOs to receive official consent for financing from abroad. This September, the Hungarian government raided the offices of NGOs distributing Norwegian funds under the pretext of fighting political influence.

Cutting down on freedom of assembly

Russia curtailed on protest rallies in 2012, when it amended a law to introduce large fines for violating rules on public events. Azerbaijan followed the suit and passed legislation approving a nearly tenfold increase in fines for participation in an unapproved public protest. In its 2013 law on public assembly, Egypt granted security officials discretion to ban and forcibly disperse a public protest or a meeting on vague grounds.

Development banks off target

As the human rights situation is deteriorating and transition countries are reversing after two decades of reforms, the impacts of the development financiers’ lending must be called into question.

Azerbaijan currently appears as a model case for IFI lending that is likely to strengthen the elites in authoritarian regimes while turning a blind eye on human rights abuses. In the pursuit of independence from Russian gas the EU and IFIs are eyeing the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), that is part of a plan to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.

In February this year, the EBRD released an economic assessment of the impacts of the Sochi Winter Olympics. Two days before that date Vitishko had been arrested before being able to deliver the draft report on detrimental environmental impacts of the Games (pdf) for a discussion in Sochi.

Although these two cases stand separately, the legacy of Vitishko and his colleagues at the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus demonstrate the urgent need for the IFIs to bridge the political and economic transformation with the observance of fundamental rights. Without achieving this more cases like Vitishko’s will regrettably keep appearing.

Will Ukrainian coal hijack today’s Energy Community meeting?

Today, Energy and Economy Ministers of the eight signatory countries of the Energy Community Treaty [1], along with the EU Commissioner for Energy, are holding their annual meeting – the Ministerial Council – in Kiev, Ukraine.

There are two points on today’s agenda (pdf) in which Ukraine, currently holding the presidency of the Ministerial Council, has an instrumental role and whose outcomes we are particularly concerned about.

One will be a discussion of Ukraine’s commitments to reduce emissions from coal fired power plants, which, under the current Energy Community provisions, should take place by the end of 2027. This deadline which had already been moved from January 2018 to December 2027 is very accommodating for Energy Community countries, compared with the 2016 deadline applicable in the EU member states (for existing coal-fired plants).

However, Ukraine is proposing yet another extension of this deadline until 2033. Basically, the Ukrainian government would like to continue with the “business-as-usual” operation of its already old and inefficient coal power plant fleet for almost 20 more years from now.

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Why Ukraine must address inefficiency and pollution at its ageing coal-fired power plants

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This proposal comes from a country where none of the coal-fired power plants have any pollution control for sulphur (SOx) or nitrogen oxide (NOx) and where dust emissions are up to 45 times above the exceed limits of the EU’s Large Combustion Plants Directive (LCPD). Basically, none of these plants would be allowed to operate in any EU country because of their emissions, or would have a strict deadline for closure.

The urgent need for reform in Ukraine’s energy sector and the opportunities that the Energy Community membership brings in this regard are explained in more detail in the new Bankwatch report (pdf) “Dusting off Ukraine’s energy sector – Why the country must address inefficiency and pollution at its ageing coal-fired power plants”. It is based on a field trip to two coal power plants and communities Western Ukraine, and highlights some of the pollution challenges of energy generation from coal in Ukraine.

Allowing Ukraine to further postpone emission reductions would not only prolong the avoidable pollution under which local communities have to suffer but could create a dangerous double standard for the implementation of energy legislation on the one hand and environmental legislation on the other hand.

A common energy market for the EU and the Energy Community that does not privilege environmentally damaging electricity sources is only possible when environmental regulations are not allowed to take the backseat. Already now two power plants in western Ukraine are connected to the European electricity grid and export some 55% of their output to Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Poland, while creating tremendous air pollution and health problems for the people living close to the plants. It would be inexcusable for the Energy Community to allow this to continue for another 20 years.

Environmental provisions in the future Treaty

Also on the Ministerial Council’s agenda for today is the Treaty’s revision and extension until 2026. Proposals that the Energy Community members should adopt more of the EU’s environmental legislation are not given a warm welcome by some of the member countries, including Ukraine that is now leading the discussions.

Earlier this year, the final report (pdf) of an expert group that reviewed the Energy Community’s set-up and working methods suggested several concrete reforms, among them “best available techniques” requirements for power plants, public procurement in the energy sector and ambient air quality regulation.

The governments of Energy Community members will today try to establish a roadmap for 2015 for deciding on these and other proposals for the future of their energy sectors.

It is an important turning point for the Energy Community in which environmental improvements should not be sacrificed.

Notes

1. The Energy Community brings together Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine – and soon also Georgia – with the stated goal of extending EU internal energy policy to south east Europe and the Black Sea region. The Energy Community Treaty sets out, among others, which energy-related parts of EU legislation have to be adopted by the participating countries.

Zagreb residents protest incinerator plans ahead of new waste management plan approval

I had a strong sense of deja-vu today. On 31 March 2008, residents of the Zagreb suburb of Resnik held a protest against plans for a 385 000 tonnes per year waste incinerator which was to be built nearby. It was a sunny day and the majority of Resnik’s residents came along to show their opposition to yet another industrial facility being built in their neighbourhood and to push for a waste management system built on waste prevention and recycling.

Later in the year, the City Council confirmed that the incinerator project would not go ahead, and it seemed that the space had finally been created to allow a sustainable waste management system to be put in place in Zagreb.

Yet six-and-a-half years later, on 21 September 2014, here we were again. Again in Resnik, again against the planned incinerator and in favour of recycling, again on a sunny day, and again with the majority of residents present.

There were some differences however. People are even more angry now. Even Resnik’s priest had some harsh words for the Mayor this time.

And there is much wider interest in Zagreb’s waste problem than there was then – still not enough, but more experts and civil initiatives are coming together to put pressure on the city authorities.

Read also

City of Zagreb still playing with fire
Bankwatch Mail article | July 18, 2014

Zagreb municipal solid waste incinerator, Croatia
Project background

This Thursday, Zagreb City Assembly will vote on a ‘new’ waste management plan for the city, which again contains an incinerator as one of its main components and fails miserably to finally implement a door-to-door recycling system or serious waste prevention measures.

So how come that in six-and-a-half years the City of Zagreb hasn’t managed to implement a sustainable waste management system and has instead gone back to the incinerator plan that it already admitted once it could not implement?

It is not due to lack of alternatives. For years already NGOs and civil initiatives like our Croatian member group Zelena akcija/Friends of the Earth Croatia have promoted a system based on prevention, recycling and composting, and mechanical-biological treatment, with landfill needed for only a small amount of stabilised waste left at the end of the process. Many cities all over the world are implementing such systems.

But it might be due to selective hearing. The fact that ostensibly ‘green’ countries like Denmark, Germany and Austria all use incinerators to some extent is seen as proof that they must be fine. There can be few people in Zagreb who haven’t heard the tiresome tale about Vienna’s legendary Spittalau incinerator in the middle of the city, as if it is inconceivable that something built in 1971 in Vienna – and re-built in 1987 after a major fire – might not be the optimal solution for Zagreb in 2014. Indeed Vienna’s recycling and composting rate, while head and shoulders above Zagreb’s at around 50 percent, is the lowest in Austria – is further progress being hampered by needing to fill the city’s incineration capacity?

Other countries too are finding that their progress in recycling and composting may be hampered by having too many incinerators. Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands already have more incinerator capacity than residual waste (pdf) and import waste to feed their hungry incinerators. The UK soon will have overcapacity as well if it constructs the incinerators it has granted permits for. Denmark in 2013 came out with a waste management plan that explicitly aims at decreasing incineration and increasing recycling, as it recycles so much waste that it may even have trouble meeting its EU 2020 recycling targets.

More positive aspects of waste management from Germany, Austria and other EU countries such as door-to-door collection of recyclables and organic waste, as well as the promotion of home composting, are not getting a look-in in Zagreb, never mind that the EU now has a target of 50 percent recycling of municipal waste by 2020, which Croatia is a very long way from meeting. The Zagreb plan’s only move for increasing recycling is to increase the number of containers on the streets and the number of recycling yards, in spite of the fact that this approach obviously hasn’t brought high levels of recycling in the past, nor has it done so in other countries.

Such stubborn blindness on the part of the Zagreb authorities on how to implement a functioning prevention, recycling and composting system is extremely frustrating. But Resnik’s residents have today shown that they are ready to continue their fight to defend themselves from the incinerator, and let us hope that their persistence will force a turnaround of city waste policy, and soon. In the meantime, any potential investors in the incinerator would be well advised to keep away.

Cross-border coal pollution for the first time under scrutiny by UN body

When it comes to coal, Serbia really doesn’t do things by halves.

One of the coal-fired power plants that Serbia plans to build, Kostolac B3, is the first coal power plant to be under consideration by the United Nation’s Espoo Convention Implementation Committee for potentially breaching the Convention’s transboundary environmental impact assessment obligations. According to these a country is obliged to properly inform and consult neighbouring countries about transboundary environmental risks of projects it is promoting. So far, no coal power plants have ever been subject to consideration by the Committee.

This opens an interesting precedent for the numerous coal plants being planned across the Balkans. Countries might have to fulfil yet another obligation before receiving the environmental permits for their plants.

It was a submission by Bankwatch Romania that made the Committee take action and consider looking into the potential breach by the Serbian state. A letter we received on Friday confirmed the Committee’s decision.

In our submission, we argued that Serbia has not notified Romania about the potential environmental impacts of constructing a new 350 MW unit at Kostolac in north-east Serbia on the Danube river and only about 15 kilometres from the Romanian border. Kostolac B3 is supposed to be built by China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC), that seems not to be the most reliable of partners, and would be a fifth block in the complex which also hosts two open-cast coal mines, Drmno and Cirikovac.

According to the Espoo Convention, Romania, as a potentially affected party, should have been notified by Serbia, but this has not happened as the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change stated in a document sent to Bankwatch Romania in March 2014.

The Espoo Convention stipulates that thermal power stations and other combustion installations with a heat output of 300 megawatts or more are considered to have transboundary impacts and should therefore undergo an environmental impact assessment in the neighbouring countries.

Additionally, the public in Romania, as potentially affected by this future coal plant, should have been given a chance to take part in environmental impact assessment procedures. This has not happened either: information about Kostolac was only ever published in Serbian, giving the Romanian public no chance to impact any decision about the future of the project.

A potential precedent

The decision of the Espoo Committee to consider the so-called “information communication” from Bankwatch Romania is momentous. This is the first time that the Committee is looking at issues around cross-border impacts of a coal fired power plant plant, having traditionally been more concerned with nuclear plants.

This opens an interesting precedent for the numerous coal plants being planned across the Balkans. Should the Committee eventually rule that Kostolac B3 breached this international law, countries might have to fulfil yet another obligation before receiving the environmental permits for their plants, namely to not only properly notify and consult their own citizens but those of neighbouring countries as well.

It is too early for anti-coal campaigners to celebrate since investigating a case under the Espoo Convention is a lengthy process and the decision about a breach is still months ahead. For now, the Committee decided to continue its consideration of this case at its next session (9-11 December 2014). Bankwatch Romania and the Government of Serbia were invited to provide further information about the case. Our submission to the Implementation Committee will therefore force the Serbian government to have to explain itself about why it has not notified other countries. We look forward to these explanations!

Other troubles for Kostolac

The Espoo Committee decision to look into Kostolac is just another element in a longer list of legal challenges to the project. The Serbian government’s decision to approve the Environmental Impact Assessment study for the construction of Kostolac B3 coal power plant is also challenged in the Serbian national administrative court by the Serbian Center for Ecology and Sustainable Development – CEKOR. In addition, a recent report (pdf) by the Belgrade-based Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability – CRTA shows that the Serbian government is supporting the Kostolac coal power plant and mines with loan guarantees and potentially VAT breaks.

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The reality is that coal plants in Europe are increasingly hard to construct, because of ever more stringent environmental regulation and ever shakier economics of coal. To push coal projects through, authorities and project promoters often have to cut legislative and due diligence corners. Yet civil society in Europe, including in the Balkans, has also more and more tools to combat these bad practices. It seems today that the Espoo Convention is another such tool. After all, pollution from coal has no borders, and whether more coal will be built in the Balkans is a concern for all of us, no matter where we live in Europe.

Serbian energy sector needs overhaul

The news portal Deutsche Welle has visited the Kolubara lignite mine in Serbia and produced a short clip about the difficulties faced by the Serbian energy sector.

Our Serbian colleague Nikola Perusic speaks in the video about the terrible landslide that happened in May 2013.

See the video here

The clip doesn’t mention this year’s floods – which hit communities living next to the Kolubara mine particularly hard and dealt yet another blow to Serbia’s energy sector. But as Bankwatch pointed out in July, the floods are not a reason to fall back to lignite as a cheap fuel but rather exemplify the vulnerabilities that come with the hyper-centralisation and over-reliance on coal in Serbia’s energy sector.

Corporate interest on way to win over the EU bank’s transparency policy

The European Investment Bank is currently reviewing its transparency policy dating from 2010, and running a public consultation on the matter, which was started in early July and is meant to finish end of the year. A review of the institution’s transparency policy is more than welcome, considering that the bank is not faring that well on transparency compared to other global public institutions: according to the 2013 Aid Transparency Index, the EIB fared as “poor” on transparency and accountability, worse than the IMF, the African Development Bank or the German Development Bank KfW.

Although over the years, the bank has made attempts to improve its practices, campaigners active on the bank have a sense that as of late the bank has become slower at disclosing information.

A transparency policy like this would cater well to the secrecy preferred by corporate actors while the obvious public interests in a public bank don’t seem to play even a secondary role.

In a symbolic case this year, the EIB continues to withhold important information about tax evasion allegations surrounding its 50 million US dollars loan to Mopani copper mine in Zambia. Following accusations of tax evasion against the mine in 2011, more than 50 MEPs, in an open letter to the EIB, called for a moratorium on public financing for mining projects. The bank announced an investigation of the tax evasion allegations against Mopani Copper Mines plc, a Zambian company which is largely owned by Glencore. Yet despite complaints by civil society organisations to the bank and the European Ombudsman, an open letter to the EIB President and the advice of the bank’s own complaints mechanism to make the investigation public, the content of the report is still kept secret.

Mopani is just one case in point of how the bank is failing to meet transparency and accountability standards expected from a public institution. Since the consultation of the new transparency policy opened, NGOs such as Counter Balance, in which Bankwatch is a member, have been sending their input (pdf) to the bank in the hope of turning it into a more accountable institution, as it suits the bank of the European Union.

However, surprisingly, the bank’s current draft (pdf) of its new transparency policy, as it was released to the public in the beginning of July, would mean a major step backwards and a dilution of the actual policy in terms of access to information and the public disclosure of information.

The most worrying elements of the draft are:

The EIB wants to apply access to information requirements only when exercising its “administrative tasks”, but ignores the fact that there is currently no commonly agreed definition of what EIB administrative and non-administrative tasks mean – neither in EU legislation nor in the recent jurisprudence. Rather than hiding behind a restrictive interpretation of EU regulation 1049/2001, we advocate for the requirements on access to information – a right stated in the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights – to be applied to all activities performed by the publicly owned EIB.
The Bank proposes to significantly expand its existing exemptions to information disclosure and go beyond what is requested by EU legislation. As a result, EU citizens would be unable to access most of EIB internal documents, even if they are of public interest.
There is a new “presumption of confidentiality” that all documents related to internal investigations, reports and audits are confidential and not to be disclosed, even if they concern matters of public interest.
Apart from simplification of the text, the Bank has proposed no improvements to its existing transparency policy. This goes against the numerous statements from the Bank about its appetite for transparency – especially in the context of the capital increase which took place in 2013 and for which the bank promised that an increased lending would go in parallel to an increased transparency of its operations.

All in all, the policy draft is less concerned with transparency than it is with confidentiality. A transparency policy like this would cater well to the secrecy preferred by corporate actors while the obvious public interests in the dealings of a public bank don’t seem to play even a secondary role.

NGOs monitoring the EIB will not let this be the last word. Strong requirements for a pro-active disclosure of documents and the engagement of stakeholders must be included in the final policy. Also the bank’s website needs to be improved substantially, including better presentation of project information, a complete public register of environmental documents and a register of complaint cases.

Anything less would be a shameful result for the public bank of the European Union.

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