Blog entry

EIB moves to curb intermediated hydropower financing

During the last few years, we’ve gradually discovered the involvement of the European Investment Bank in more and more small hydropower projects in southeast Europe, financed via commercial or national development bank intermediaries.

These include the Mojanska plants in Montenegro, the Tresonecka and Brza Voda plants in North Macedonia, the Beli Kamen and Komalj plants in Serbia, the Ilovac plant in Croatia, and the Blagoevgradska Bistritsa plants in Bulgaria.

What we have managed to piece together is that the EIB has provided at least 27 loans for hydropower plants through financial intermediaries in the region since 2010, though the exact number and many of the names of the plants remain unknown.

Intermediaries are secretive for a reason

The EIB doesn’t require its bank intermediaries to publish the names of the projects they finance (unless they are worth above EUR 50 million, which they rarely are), and only discloses the names of the projects financed if the intermediary consents.

It is not surprising that many intermediaries don’t want to advertise their involvement in small hydropower projects. Hundreds of plants have mushroomed across the region in the last two decades, many of them in the region’s most remote and pristine areas. Leaving rivers dry and robbing people of water for cattle, irrigation or even drinking, no other infrastructure projects have attracted such widespread public resistance across southeast Europe.

Arms-length investments

EIB investments are required to meet EU standards, but in the case of projects financed via intermediaries, it is usually up to the intermediaries to ensure this. What has become obvious in the last few years, is that commercial and national development banks in southeast Europe are far from able or willing to do so.

Most of the hydropower plants named above are in protected areas, yet not all were even subject to environmental impact assessments and where they were, they were of appalling quality.

When we have raised concerns with the EIB about the projects, the Bank has not been willing to take corrective action, stating that the intermediary is responsible for due diligence and monitoring and that the national authorities are responsible for environmental enforcement. While this may be true in theory, in practice it often turns out that neither the intermediaries nor the authorities are doing their job.

New exclusion rules

Earlier this year, the EIB published its new environmental and social policy and standards. Despite the much-awaited inclusion of specific standards for financial intermediaries, not much changed for intermediated projects.

Now, however, the Bank has updated a complementary document called the EIB eligibility, excluded activities and excluded sectors list, which updates a similar document from 2013.

It states, among other things, that ‘While detailed EIB due diligence may lead to the approval of such projects in some circumstances, in general final beneficiaries whose main activity is in the following sectors are excluded from multi-beneficiary intermediated loans and other intermediated debt products’. The sectors listed include mining, waste incineration and hydropower, among others, meaning that bank intermediaries can no longer finance hydropower projects without the EIB directly carrying out detailed project checks itself.

Similar rules which entered force at the beginning of 2020 at the EBRD have shown that in reality, intermediaries mostly won’t want to go through the extra hassle of additional due diligence and will stick to lower-risk projects instead. This is great news for rivers in southeast Europe and elsewhere.

Existing projects still need attention

The fact that the EIB has recognised the problem and stemmed the flow of financing to hydropower via intermediaries is highly welcome. But the projects which have already been built still need the Bank’s attention in order to mitigate their worst impacts. The EIB cannot simply walk away from the fact that its money was instrumental in making these projects happen and needs to play its part in at least ensuring that adequate water levels are left in the riverbeds.

The Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign aims to protect the most valuable rivers in the Balkans from building hydropower plants. The campaign is coordinated by the NGOs Riverwatch and EuroNatur, and is being run jointly with partner organisations from the Balkans.

Riding roughshod over EU environmental and public consultation rules risks boomerang effect for renewables development

As part of its REPowerEU initiative to end reliance on Russian gas, the European Commission is currently running a public consultation – ending on 27 July – on proposed amendments to the Renewable Energy Directive.

Go-to areas

The idea is for each Member State to identify ‘go-to areas’ where renewable energy development is considered desirable. These should include e.g. built-up areas or degraded land not usable for agriculture. Projects in these areas would then be subject to lighter environmental permitting processes.

As spatial planning is a clear problem in some EU Member States, it makes sense to tackle this issue and make sure that a reasonable amount of land is allocated for much-needed renewables development, but this will not be a quick process if it is based on proper scientific research.

Decades of environmental protection achievements under threat

The problem is, projects in go-to areas would not need an environmental impact assessment (EIA). And in cases where they may have significant impacts on Natura 2000 sites, they would not need to undergo appropriate assessments as required by the Habitats Directive.

This is panic-mode decision-making at its worst. The EIA Directive and Habitats Directives are already flexible enough to ensure that benign projects are not subject to unnecessary procedures. The screening process already ensures that many solar and wind projects need no EIA. So the main change would be to let controversial projects in go-to areas off the EIA hook as well.

Needless threat to Natura 2000 sites

Muddying its own idea that go-to areas should be priority areas for development, the Commission has made an inexplicable and gratuitous proposal which needlessly puts Natura 2000 sites at risk as well.

Currently, if a project is likely to have a significant impact on a Natura 2000 site, it has to undergo an appropriate assessment under the Habitats Directive. If it is confirmed that the project would ‘adversely affect the integrity of the site concerned’, it generally should not go ahead. There are exceptions, however, for projects where there is no alternative and which are of ‘overriding public interest’.

The rules are stricter in cases where the site hosts a priority natural habitat type and/or a priority species – the latter including wolves, bears, or sturgeon, for example. In such cases, generally only protecting human health or public safety can be cited as grounds to declare a project of ‘overriding public interest’.

The result is that some renewable projects can be built in Natura 2000 areas, and some cannot. This must always be assessed on a case by case basis.

Yet the Commission has proposed that ‘the planning, construction and operation of plants for the production of energy from renewable sources, their connection to the grid and the related grid itself and storage assets’ are to be ‘presumed as being in the overriding public interest and serving public health and safety’.

The appropriate assessment will be robbed of its power, reduced to a tool to define mitigation and compensation measures, instead of preventing harm in the first place. And it is not even clear what will be achieved, as Natura 2000 areas are unlikely to offer many quick opportunities for renewables development.

The public consultation boomerang

EIA and appropriate assessment processes also include public consultation requirements and guarantee the public the right to challenge the relevant decisions in court. So the Commission’s proposals are likely to breach the Aarhus Convention and are almost certain to be counterproductive.

Renewable energy, whether wind, hydropower or other sources, has already been a flashpoint for public opposition, and there is nothing more guaranteed to get on people’s nerves than the feeling they are being kept in the dark about what is happening in their area. The process of deciding on go-to areas is supposed to include public consultation but cannot be a substitute for project-level processes.

Other barriers need more attention

Environmental protection rules are not the only, nor the main barrier to renewable energy development in the EU. A 2021 EU-funded study identified a range of issues preventing faster renewables deployment, including spatial planning issues, lack of skilled administrative staff, unclear or incoherent rules, and lack of digitalisation leading to the need for extensive physical paperwork. Many of these issues are echoed by WindEurope in their paper on the issue as well.

The Commission’s REPowerEU proposals do include some points on addressing these issues, notably spatial planning. But much more attention needs to be paid to some of the other points. Speeding up digitalisation and increasing administrative capacity to process permitting applications, for example, would be a much more constructive approach than dismantling environmental safeguards.

The European Parliament must ensure that the more destructive elements of these proposals are stopped. Otherwise this Commission will be remembered not for the European Green Deal, but for ripping up the EU’s environmental and public consultation rules.

Skavica Dam — the last thing Albania needs

Greenfield hydropower projects bring serious risks for people and nature which very often outweigh the economic benefits. In the worst cases, huge areas of land are flooded, many people need to abandon their homeland, rivers are converted into artificial reservoirs, wild animals are brought to extinction and the country is left with foreign debts and a climate-vulnerable energy system.

Considering all these criteria, the planned Skavica dam in Albania is extremely damaging. Nonetheless, according to the Albanian government, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is considering financing it, even though the project would fall under the DFC’s list of Categorically Prohibited Projects.

Albania relies heavily on hydropower, with 95 per cent of its domestically produced electricity generated this way. Its annual electricity generation has suffered from lack of water due to climate change and it will get even worse according to the World Bank. Albania should invest in energy efficiency, wind and solar plants and reconstruction of existing dams, rather than building more of the same.

The Dibra valley under water

The Skavica hydropower project includes a large dam built in a pristine gorge with high cliffs next to the village of Skavica in the municipality of Kukës. The most significant impacts would be in the municipality of Dibër. The huge reservoir would impact, according to the municipality, up to 15,138 hectares (58 square miles) of land, mostly agricultural land and forests, but also 41 villages. With several thousand people displaced, Skavica may have the worst social impacts of any dam built in Europe in the 21^st century.

So far, no official information about the design and location of the dam is available, as the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) is expected to be completed by the end of 2022. But according to the project promoter, the Albanian Energy Corporation (KESH), the dam will probably be 147 metres high.

Decisions made far from the public eye

In July 2021, seemingly without any tender procedure, a preliminary contract was signed between the state-owned KESH and the US construction giant Bechtel for the first phase of the project which entails carrying out technical investigation, building access roads for construction and carrying out an environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA). This was preceded by a special law approved in parliament (No. 38/2021), with the name of the company included in the law, therefore eliminating open procurement and competition. Already, a similar special law for the building of the national theatre was deemed unconstitutional by the Albanian Constitutional court.

Bechtel has gained notoriety in southeast Europe for its involvement in several unsuccessful and/or overpriced projects, like in Kosovo, Romania and North Macedonia. This raises the risk of possible corruption and doubts about the value for money of the project, as well as the meaningfulness of the forthcoming environmental impact assessment. If deals for the project have already been arranged behind closed doors, then the ESIA is bound to come up with the ‘right’ answer, irrespective of its actual findings.

Local people have organised many protests in Albania and the US against the planned plant and the decision-making. In 2020 the police fined two of the organisers of one such protest, ‘as a way’, they claim, ‘for the institutions to scare the people from reacting to official decisions’. The Facebook group Opposition to Skavica Dam has almost 4,000 followers and a petition has been signed by more than 2,000 people.

The rarest cat in Europe brought to extinction

In addition to the inevitable negative impacts on local communities and the violation of their human rights, the dam would also inundate floodplains, forests and pastures around the river where many species threatened in the rest of Europe are common.

But one of the animals is especially endangered, in fact, it is the rarest cat in Europe. The Balkan lynx (Lynx lynx balcanicus) has less than 40 individuals remaining in the wild. The gorge of the Black Drin, which has inaccessible cliffs and forests far from villages, is the only area where the lynx can cross between the Mavrovo National Park in North Macedonia and the Munella mountain in Albania. The building of the dam would isolate the only two viable populations and condemn them to extinction.

The Skavica dam would also inundate the most extensive floodplain forest in Albania – the forest along the Black Drin River composed of black alder (Alnus glutinosa), black poplar (Populus nigra) and willows (Salix sp.). It is a priority habitat according to the EU Habitats Directive. Conservation of this forest is necessary to store more carbon in the soil, especially critical in the country with the highest deforestation rate in Europe (which led to a ban on logging being imposed in 2015).

It’s surprising that Albania is still pushing hydropower development. Hydropower will not resolve the country’s energy crisis, and will endanger not only nature and wildlife, but also the people of Dibra who will be forced to leave behind their homes and the lands on which they depend. It will only get harder to build new hydropower plants in the future, due to climate vulnerability, the region’s unique biodiversity and public resistance. Given the above situation, we expect that the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will refrain from financing the Skavica hydropower plant.

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Replacing coal with forest biomass for heating is a dangerous green mirage

There is a common misconception that burning trees to generate heat can be considered ‘carbon neutral’ because the CO2 released in the process is supposedly re-absorbed by forests. In reality, harvesting and burning woody biomass curtails nature’s ability to capture carbon, and adds this greenhouse gas to the atmosphere just like burning any fossil fuel.

A 2017 study showed that the combustion of wood for heating can produce two and a half times more CO2 emissions than fossil gas, and 30 per cent more than those from coal as per unit of generated energy. So, felling forests, assuming they will grow back in 20 years or more, would create a dangerous ‘carbon debt.’ It does little to cut emissions on a timescale relevant to stemming the climate crisis, as we cannot wait decades for trees to grow back.

And yet, forest biomass still enjoys political backing in Europe. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) considers biomass a renewable fuel under certain conditions. The Directive is currently under review and the European Commission has proposed to somewhat tighten the sustainability criteria for forest biomass.

But the proposal still falls far short of addressing scientific evidence warning about the repercussions of forest biomass and threatens to be watered down even further. Research has shown that harvesting and combusting forest biomass, not only aggravates the climate crisis, it also increases the risk of deforestation in countries where forest management and legal enforcement are insufficient, as is the case in much of the Western Balkans.

Illegal logging in the region is already known to be associated with corruption and organised crime. So, promoting even more forest biomass for heating where legal enforcement remains weak risks facilitating a grey economy.

According to a World Bank study, already in 2013, over 58 percent of the total woody biomass in the Westen Balkans came from unregistered consumption, as opposed to the amounts registered for energy use. In addition, there are still glaring gaps in statistical data on the sources of woody biomass, its usage and export, while there are no proper wood recycling practices exist.

Many towns in the Western Balkans, especially in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have plans for biomass-based district heating plants. But these ambitions could be little more than hot air, if only because there is no reliable data no how much residual woody biomass is actually available in each of the countries. In fact, the World Bank study mentioned above found that, on average, 75 percent of the sustainable technical potential for woody biomass for heating in the Western Balkans was already used.

Therefore, increasing demand for biomass is only likely to drive unsustainable forest harvesting. For example, because Banja Luka has no local source for woody biomass, its 49 MW heating plant uses woodchips transported from 50-100 kilometres away, and still has not been able to meet half of the demand of the wood source for this year, not least in the face of Europe’s energy crunch.

All the warning signs are there for any decision-maker who is still considering promoting forest biomass in the Western Balkans. Local governments in the region that are finally ready to abandon fossil fuels in district heating should stay away from this green mirage.

The growing appetite for forest biomass, not least when it is legitimised by an EU directive, risks channeling government subsidies to a fuel that practically worsens the climate crisis and moves the region away from genuine sustainable energy.

European public finance also has an important role to play in ensuring the Western Balkans’ energy transition is on the right track. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as well as other international financial institutions, should fully mobilise to help accelerate the decarbonisation of heating systems. This also means halting the promotion of primary forest biomass within EBRD programmes such as ReDEWeB and Green Cities and within EU investment funds.

The EBRD in particular needs to formally stipulate that biomass – exclusively, secondary woody biomass – may be used in small, combined heat and power installations only when there are no viable heating alternatives. Larger biomass plants should be avoided in order to diminish both the climate and biodiversity risks.

For local governments in the region, and their financial backers, the focus needs to remain on implementing modern and efficient heating technologies such as heat pumps coupled with renewable energies like solar, wind, geothermal power and waste heat from industry or the commercial sector. These measures need to be complemented by thermal energy storage technologies and increased investments in energy efficiency. This way we will be able to not only to help slow down the climate crisis, but also keep homes warm and forests intact.

EIB Global: new branding, old problems

EIB Global is supposed to play a pivotal role in the EU’s investments around the world, particularly through the new European Fund for Sustainable Development+. However, the EIB is not a development bank: its policies and standards are not strong enough to ensure international development is done in a responsible way. Instead, the changes promised around the creation of EIB Global seem technical and cosmetic. This lost cause may not have any impact on the bankers doing business as usual, but it will definitely be a missed opportunity for the people impacted by the EIB’s weak policies and due diligence.

Lack of transparency, insufficient human rights standards and a flawed complaints mechanism

Serious problems with the EIB-funded projects include their lack of development orientation and transparency; failures in due diligence; and major shortcomings in environmental, social and human rights standards. Bankwatch has been documenting such shortcomings for years.

Since 2015, the EIB has not required any promoter to carry out standalone human rights impact assessments.

Meanwhile, the EIB keeps providing support to projects associated with human rights violations, as proven by the more than 500 complaints submitted to the Bank regarding human rights abuses linked to a single project in Kenya.

Impacted communities from all around the world have lodged numerous cases at the EIB Complaints Mechanism, testifying on the serious impacts the Bank’s operations have had on their lives and livelihoods. In 2020 and 2021, the majority of contested cases came from complainants outside the EU.

Furthermore, the independence and legitimacy of the EIB Complaints Mechanism have been jeopardised – for instance, during the policy review process in 2018. The 2018 Complaints Mechanism Policy left room for the EIB staff and services — those whose decisions may well be the cause of adverse impacts — to interfere with the mechanism’s decisions. This further weakens the mechanism’s capacity to operate independently for those in urgent need of redress. The harmful impacts of projects from Nepal to Kenya and Georgia to Bosnia and Herzegovina were reported in global media, but nothing so far has made the Bank change its approach.

On numerous occasions, Bankwatch offered detailed recommendations for fundamental reforms at the EIB so that the Bank could better support partner countries’ development priorities, for instance on the protection and promotion of human rights. The significant gap between the EIB’s standards and their implementation on the ground has been analysed in the report Can the EIB become the EU development bank?. These calls echoed demands from the European Council, Commission and Parliament to strengthen the development orientation and effectiveness of the EIB.

The EIB has been refusing to commit to its Environmental and Social Policy and establish human rights due diligence during the 2020 and 2021 review of its Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework (ESSF). It has also been ignoring civil society’s requests to hold a constructive dialogue on the Bank’s methodologies and procedures aimed at assessing human rights violations risks and impacts. This stubbornness has become the shameful hallmark of the EU house bank.

Rebranding, a good way to distract the EU institutions and civil society

The idea of creating EIB Global addressed the EU Council’s attempts to develop an optimal scheme for the European Financial Architecture for Development. Back in 2019, the Council established a Wise Persons Group to analyse the situation and propose suitable options. This group’s report underlined the need to establish a singular institution that could become the natural centre for EU development finance. The report presented three options for this centre: the EIB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or a newly born EU bank. The European Council chose a fourth option, the ‘Status Quo Plus’, which was an enhancement of the current institutional setup.

This discussion was a push for the EIB to fill the gap in the EU financial architecture for development and resulted in the establishment of EIB Global. On the occasion of its launch, the EIB underlined that: ‘EIB Global is not just a new management structure. It represents a new direction to increase the impact of limited development finance.’ Yet surprisingly,

when trying to build its image as a financial institution well-equipped to support the EU’s development policies, the Bank almost totally ignored the need to secure proper safeguards and due diligence.

The EIB had regional offices outside the EU before creating EIB Global. Since its launch, the Bank has added regional hubs, starting with one in Kenya. On closer look though, the East Africa Hub or Nairobi Hub, as the EIB called it in the press materials promoting its opening, seems to be just another EIB regional office in Kenya, similar to the Nairobi-based EIB East Africa regional headquarters opened in 2019.

There’s a lot of promotion around EIB Global, but in practice the changes within the structure of the Bank are cosmetic. An Advisory Board or Group has been established, but it is hard to obtain information about its structure, remit, performance or even its official designation.

It seems that technically, EIB Global is simply another directorate with an additional advisory body, the composition of which the Bank has decided to keep secret.

Civil society demands key reforms of the EIB

In response to the launch of EIB Global, 23 civil society organisations from all around the world formulated key demands to guide the Bank’s future operations. Here are the most important ones:

EIB Global should demonstrate clear development additionality. Focusing on a pro-poor sustainable development agenda should be a priority rather than acting as a tool of economic competitiveness and diplomacy supporting geopolitical interests of the EU. EIB Global should modify its policies and governance structure to strengthen participation and ensure affected communities in recipient countries establish their own development strategies and priorities.

EIB Global must ensure inclusive and meaningful consultation and engagement with communities impacted by its projects prior to their approval and throughout project implementation.

EIB Global, especially when operating in fragile contexts, must ensure that local communities have knowledge about and access to effective, independent and safe complaints mechanisms (an independent project-level grievance mechanism, a reinforced EIB Complaints Mechanism and access to the European Ombudsman), including the right to effective redress. The EIB Complaints Mechanism should be reformed and its effectiveness and safe access should be reinforced so that it becomes a more meaningful and less risky avenue for impacted rights-holders.

Increased transparency is needed at the new EIB Global branch, especially for the people affected by EIB-financed projects, as well as for societies globally who should be given the information to understand the costs and benefits of EIB operations that are relevant to them. In addition to transparency at the project level, EIB Global’s decision-making structure – including its Advisory Board – should operate in full transparency via disclosing its composition, agendas and minutes.

Following the adoption of the new Environmental and Social Sustainability Framework, the EIB’s environmental and social due diligence practices should be reviewed and strengthened. Currently the quality of the Bank’s due diligence and monitoring remains insufficient. The EIB should not support any project which does not fully comply with all relevant environmental and social standards.

The EIB does not have a dedicated system of human rights due diligence. The existing social safeguards neither sufficiently prevent intimidation, threats and forced evictions, nor protect the existence and wellbeing of the most vulnerable project stakeholders. For this reason, the EIB must develop a Human Rights Strategy and adequate, publicly accessible procedures for human rights risks and impact assessments at project level.

Kosovo’s new law on pollution control risks muddying the waters

It was only a year ago, in July 2021, that Kosovo finally adopted an Administrative Instruction that brought its laws into line with pollution control legislation under the Energy Community Treaty. But the country now aims to move ahead and go beyond the legal minimum required by the Treaty, bringing its legislation into line with newer EU standards.

So far, so good. Even if Kosovo has not yet brought its existing coal plants into line with the Energy Community rules, it is vitally important to make sure that this happens as soon as possible and that any new industrial facilities are built in line with the latest EU standards.

The new rules are set by a draft Law on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, which is currently under scrutiny by the Parliament.

However, a new analysis shows that serious changes are needed if the new legislation is to avoid causing confusion and opening loopholes.

Three different air pollution standards – which is which?

The first problem is that the draft Law, if adopted as it is now, will result in massive uncertainty as to which pollution standards power plants and other industrial facilities have to comply with.

The Administrative Instruction, which is a piece of implementing legislation for the 2010 Law on Air Protection from Pollution, already regulates emission limit values, deadlines for compliance with these values, the process and deadlines for updating permits, and definitions of ‘existing plant’ and ‘new plant’. Now the draft law on integrated prevention pollution and control would regulate them again, but in a different way. In fact, the 2010 law is also in the process of being updated, but its implementing legislation would remain in force until replaced.

But the new draft Law on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control is written as if this Administrative Instruction does not exist, so there are no provisions for a transition from one to the other.

Instead, it introduces two additional new sets of emissions limit values. One set relates to those defined in the reference document on Best Available Techniques (BAT), and one relates to minimum emission limit values that are to be adhered to in cases where it is established that applying the BAT would be prohibitively costly.

Are the new standards really stricter? Nobody knows.

Another problem is that so far the new emission limit values have not been published, so it is unclear whether they are stricter than the existing ones or not.

The emission limit values which ensure that under normal operating conditions, emissions do not exceed the levels related to BAT are to be defined by the ministry responsible for the environment. This means that the emission limits related to BAT may end up being different and less stringent than those in the EU.

And the limit values for cases when BAT is deemed prohibitively costly are supposed to be defined in an annex to the draft law. However, they have not been published, so they may be even less strict than the current standards in the Administrative Instruction.

By analogy with the corresponding EU legislation, they should actually be the same as the ones in the Administrative Instruction as they should correspond with emissions limit values from Annex V parts 1 and 2 of the Industrial Emissions Directive, so it is not clear what the difference will be.

EU Best Available Techniques should be used

As well as the risk of Kosovo’s BAT-associated emission limit values being more lax than those of the EU, it is also not clear why the ministry needs to be burdened with the extremely time-consuming exercise of defining them when the EU ones are available.

Experience from Western Balkan countries which have stipulated that a ministry would define the BAT-associated emission limit values shows that the process is always heavily delayed, if it is done at all. Unless the country stipulates that it will use EU BAT reference documents in the meantime, such delays mean that permitting processes rely on older and less strict standards.

No access to justice

There are other issues with the draft law as well. For example, its definition of ‘new’ and ‘existing’ plant is different from that in the Administrative Instruction, and it is not spelt out how this relates to permitting of the plants. This will render it unclear which emission limit values apply for plants of different ages and especially those which are included in the National Emission Reduction Plan (NERP) as they are anyway subject to derogations from the usual emission limits.

But one of the most serious is the failure to include access to justice provisions from the Industrial Emissions Directive. This means that if the ministry makes an error in permitting, it will be difficult or perhaps impossible for the public to challenge it, thus severely undermining the integrity of the law.

How to move forward

The issues above require more than amendments to the draft law as it needs to be comprehensively revised in order to ensure a smooth transition from the Administrative Instruction and coherence with the draft law on air protection from pollution – or alternatively these two laws may be merged. Among other things, the changes need to include:

Clarifying the relationship between the two laws and the Administrative Act, as well as any necessary transition periods
Clarifying how permit revision and setting emission limit values will work for existing plants and new plants
Publishing the annex with the emission limit values for cases where BAT is deemed prohibitively expensive
Stipulating that the EU’s BAT reference documents are the ones to be used in permitting
Including the access to justice provisions from the Industrial Emissions Directive.

This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of CEE Bankwatch and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

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