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How to hit the ground running on just transition in the Western Balkans and Ukraine

The recommendations come as the European Commission is closing this Friday a tender for a consortium to run the secretariat of the new Initiative, dedicated to the Western Balkans and Ukraine. They are endorsed by eight other NGOs from the Western Balkans and Ukraine or active in these countries. 

“We’ve been taking part in EU Coal Platform meetings since the very start, making sure that the proceedings included voices of local communities and civil society, which was not obvious at the beginning,” says Alexandru Mustață, Bankwatch Just Transition coordinator and one of the authors of the recommendations. “Just as the Coal Platform has been extremely useful in inspiring and guiding coal regions in the EU on their transition paths, the Initiative can do the same for neighbouring countries – on the condition that it starts out on the right foot.”

Among the NGOs’ recommendations are: 

  • Ensure transparency, both in the functioning of the Initiative and in selecting participant regions and financed projects
  • Create an online hub both to share knowledge and ensure transparency, and hence credibility
  • Respect the partnership principle throughout all actions undertaken, meaning involving all stakeholders in all phases of all processes, from the preparatory stages through to the implementation and assessment of results
  • Make any future funding conditional on proper bottom-up planning and respect for public participation, proportional to the magnitude of the challenge, and rewarding of ambition; do not give any funding to fossil fuel projects, including gas.

“We welcome the Commission’s plans to create this Initiative dedicated to the Western Balkans and Ukraine. It fills a gap in countries where the potential for transformation is huge but the political will to advance on that path is sometimes lacking,” says Ioana Ciuta, a Bankwatch energy campaigner working in the Western Balkans and co-author of the recommendations. “But what our experience with the EU Coal Platform has taught us so far is that only with the substantial involvement of local communities can a plan for the future of these regions be well developed and successfully implemented. So we hope to see this respect for grassroots participation visible from the kickoff of the new Initiative.”

Check out the recommendations here.

European Parliament asks European Investment Bank to double down on sustainability and transparency

Yesterday, the European Parliament approved two reports (see here and here) on the activities of the EIB. One report was led by MEP David Cormand in the Committee of Budgets (BUDG) and the other by MEP Bas Eickhout in the Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT).

Both reports send a strong signal to the bank: it needs to seriously ratchet up its standards on  transparency, accountability and sustainability. The role of the EIB in financing the European Green Deal while being part of the EU’s response to the economic consequences of the Covid-19 crisis was a key focus of both reports.

Bankwatch, Counter Balance and a growing number of civil society groups have been calling on the EIB to up its game if it is to genuinely become the EU Climate Bank. We are glad to see that the European Parliament is of a similar opinion urging the EIB to align its performance with the Paris Agreement by the end of the year. 

The CONT report “calls on the EIB to commit to ending the financing of all projects that are not in line with the Paris Agreement and the EU’s climate goals” and “calls on the EIB to draw up a roadmap with specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-defined targets with regards to the implementation of the Paris Agreement.” In addition, the BUDG report has urged the EIB to guarantee for climate neutrality of its non-climate lending. 

In this context, MEPs rightly noted that currently a third of the EIB financing, which flows via intermediaries – mostly commercial banks – is distributed with no control over its climate impact. The EIB, they explain, needs to start “requiring its intermediary clients to disclose their exposure to fossil fuels, and (…) gradually apply restrictions to heavily exposed intermediaries” and the Parliament “expects that by the end of 2025 all intermediaries will have a decarbonisation plan, since this is indispensable for their financing to continue (…).”

Ongoing discussions around the future role of the EIB outside of Europe did not escape Parliament’s attention either. MEPs called on the EIB “to prioritize poverty eradication, domestic resource mobilisation and human rights” and to “make sure human rights considerations are taken into account all through its decision-making process”. Given the harmful impacts of EIB operations exposed over the last years, for example in Kenya or Georgia, we welcome the request  “to strengthen its human rights strategy, including the risk of reprisals against human rights defenders” in the context of the upcoming review of the EIB environmental and social standards. 

The quality of the EIB operations was also of particular focus and the Parliament asked the bank “to make full use of contractual clauses enabling it to suspend disbursements in cases of projects’ non-compliance with environmental, social, human rights, tax and transparency standards”. Echoing repeated calls from civil society and local communities,  the reports also ask the EIB to “enhance its monitoring of projects and improve its reporting and evaluation of actual results achieved and its analysis of actual economic, social and environmental impacts”. 

Anna Roggenbuck, EIB Policy Officer at CEE Bankwatch Network, said:

“CEE Bankwatch Network is very glad to see this year’s reports emphasising the importance for the EIB to raise the bar on transparency when implementing its projects, especially under European investment plans like the Juncker Plan and its successor InvestEU. Transparency is a key issue for citizens to understand the actions and impacts of EU institutions and a tool for an institution like EIB to demonstrate its ethics, integrity, and accountability. We also support the call for more external and independent control of the EIB operations by the European Court of Auditors in order to scrutinize the quality, effectiveness and additionality of EIB operations”.  

Xavier Sol, Director at Counter Balance, said: 

“The Parliament made it clear: the increased responsibilities of the EIB under the economic recovery plans at European level have to come with better control of public funding channeled to its clients. In this regard, parliamentarians rightly urge the EIB to truly implement its proclaimed ‘zero tolerance towards fraud and corruption’. It is time for EU public finance to stop ending as a blank cheque to polluters or fraudsters”.

For additional information please contact:

Anna Roggenbuck
Policy Officer, CEE Bankwatch Network
annar@bankwatch.org
+48-918315392
+48-509970424

Xavier Sol
Director, Counter Balance
xavier.sol@counter-balance.org
+32(0)2 893 08 61

Western Balkan coal power plants breach pollution limits by 6 times, for the second year in a row

The report can be downloaded from here.

The 2020 edition of the Comply or Close report shows that, instead of getting closer to compliance, SO2 emissions at coal power plants covered by National Emission Reduction Plans in the Western Balkans have overall increased. 

The total SO2 emissions from coal plants in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia reached nearly six times the amount allowed by the countries’ plans in 2019. The key culprits were in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia but, worryingly, the Bitola power plant complex in North Macedonia doubled its SO2 emissions in 2019. 

Three years after desulphurisation equipment was installed at the Kostolac B power plant in Serbia, the plant is still the second largest SO2 emitter in the region, single-handedly breaching the national ceiling by 1.5 times. It is topped only by Ugljevik in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has also fitted SO2 reduction equipment that is not yet functional.

Despite a slight decrease in 2019, dust emissions from the analysed power plants in these four countries remained at nearly 1.6 times the combined threshold. In particular, the Kosova B power plant in Kosovo remained the region’s top dust polluter, emitting 5.4 times as much as its emissions ceiling.

National Emissions Reduction Plans are a mechanism which makes it easier for the countries to reach compliance, as the obligatory emissions ceiling is set at the national level, rather than per individual plant. By the end of 2027, all plants must be in compliance with emission limit values individually as well. All of the region’s coal plants, except a few smaller ones, are included in such plans.

“Any government that insists on keeping these dirty power plants going, must step up investments in pollution control equipment that can comply with the LCP BREF, the EU’s newest industrial pollution standards. Until then, the plants’ operating hours need to be trimmed to meet the pollution limits in the Large Combustion Plants Directive that the countries have committed to as part of the Energy Community Treaty,” says Pippa Gallop, Southeast Europe Energy Advisor with Bankwatch and a co-author of the report.

“Our alarming findings are a testament to governments’ foot-dragging, that is already taking a toll on human life. Thousands of people across the region and in neighbouring EU countries aredying prematurely from the pollution from these coal power plants. This is unacceptable,” says Davor Pehchevski, Balkan air pollution campaign coordinator with Bankwatch.

“Overall, governments can no longer place their bets on coal. It remains to be seen whether the region’s two largest desulphurisation investments – at Ugljevik in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kostolac B in Serbia – will genuinely help cut air pollution. But in any case, decision-makers across the region need to start shutting down coal-fired power plants and shifting to sustainable forms of renewable energy. There is no way around it,” says Ioana Ciuta, Energy Coordinator with Bankwatch and co-author of the report.

For more information please contact:

Ioana Ciuta
Energy Coordinator, CEE Bankwatch Network
E-mail: ioana.ciuta@bankwatch.org
Mobile: +40724020281

Pippa Gallop
Southeast Europe Energy Advisor, CEE Bankwatch Network
E-mail: pippa.gallop@bankwatch.org
Mobile: +385 (0)99 755 9787

Press release is also available in Albanian, Serbian and Bosnian languages.

EU budget breakthrough achievable with higher climate ambition, say campaigners

Discussions today among Member States focus on a proposal from the Commission for unlocking 750 billion euros with its new recovery instrument, Next Generation EU. Yet while the proposal should be guided by principles of the European Green Deal, it still lacks explicit restrictions on fossil fuels investments. 

Even as Member States disagree on how the proposed increase from the Commission will be financed, countries back overwhelmingly a sustainable recovery. To date every state except for Poland has pledged support for the EU’s ambition of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, and in a letter this week to Council president, mayors of the Visegrad four capitals called for increasing greenhouse gas reduction targets to 55 per cent by 2030.

Raphael Hanoteaux, EU funds policy officer at CEE Bankwatch Network, said “There is more common ground among Member States then they let on. Even in central and eastern Europe, where heel dragging towards progress on climate change is at its highest, countries recognise that a green EU budget is a win win.

A sustainable, just and timely transition is possible in central and eastern Europe only if we restrict funding for fossil fuels of any kind and set a target spending level of at least 50 per cent on projects that address the threat of climate change. We know that tying the pandemic response to green stimulus is the surest way to economic recovery, so the blueprint is in front of Member States.”

For more information contact:

Raphael Hanoteaux, EU funds policy officer
CEE Bankwatch Network
raphaelh@bankwatch.org

 

Legal challenges mount for Armenia gold mine as complaint filed to EU development lender

The complaint details how the planning and construction of the gold mine near Jermuk in southern Armenia excluded public opinion during consultations over the project, damaged the town’s tourism potential and reputation as a spa destination, and polluted nature and precious water resources in the pristine area. 

Locals fear that pollution caused by the ongoing works on the mine and planned extraction of gold with cyanide leaching will damage subsistence agriculture that many rely on for their livelihoods and potentially flow into Lake Sevan, the largest freshwater reserve in the Caucasus. 

The complainants are asking the bank’s accountability mechanism to assess whether the project complied with EBRD policy requirements to protect environmental and social rights and if not, recommend that the bank withdraw from the project.

This latest complaint adds to the woes of Amulsar’s owner Lydian International. In January 2020, the company was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and subsequently filed for bankruptcy protection. 

Lydian has also been the focus of previous complaints to development lenders and international bodies, including 2014 complaints to both the EBRD and the International Finance Corporation and to the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats this year. 

Fidanka McGrath, Bankwatch EBRD policy officer said, “The bank missed the opportunity to act when the first complaints were raised in 2014. Even though construction work has begun and irreversible damage has been done, the bank should take action to stop any more destruction. The bottom line is that there is no support for this project among those who will be most greatly affected by the mine as demonstrated by a 3000 strong petition for a mine-free Jermuk by local people.”

For more information

Fidanka McGrath
EBRD policy officer, CEE Bankwatch Network
Email: fidankab@bankwatch.org
Mobile: +359 87 730 3097

The full complaint is available at https://www.ebrd.com/work-with-us/project-finance/project-complaint-mechanism/pcm-register.html. 

More background about the Amulsar mine is available at https://bankwatch.org/project/amulsar-gold-mine-armenia

Polish government urged to include municipalities, civil society in planning future of coal regions

36 local municipalities and civil society groups active in Poland’s coal regions have today signed a letter addressed to the Polish government, asking to be included in the process of planning the future of their regions. 

The letter, an initiative of WWF Poland and Polish Green Network (a Bankwatch member group), is a response to the fact that the Polish Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy – in charge of creating Territorial Plans for the country’s coal regions which would allow them to tap into the Just Transition Fund – has neither set up a broad consultation process to feed into the planning, nor published a timeline of the process. 

“Public participation is an essential element in the creation of Territorial Plans for Just Transition,” writes the letter. “It would ensure a transparent understanding of the expected direction of the development of the region, enrich the analysis of available resources, and enable obtaining society’s support for the implementation of changes.” 

Last Wednesday, the European Commission announced a significant increase in the Just Transition Fund dedicated to the transformation of the block’s fossil fuel dependent regions, from 7.5 billion euros to 40 billion. 

In order to take advantage of the money, countries must submit so-called Territorial Plans setting out the vision of transformation of regions from fossil fuel dependency to alternative models. While the European Commission has called for an inclusive process in creating the regional plans, the local municipalities and civil society in Poland signing the letter are highlighting the risk that the process may not be as transparent and participatory as necessary in this country. 

The letter is signed, among others, by mayors from coal-dependent municipalities such as Konin, Walbrzych, Bytom, Jastrzebie-Zdroj, Rybnik, Kleczew and Imielin, who are concerned their communities will not be involved in the planning process. 

Marta Anczewska/ WWF Poland: “The Just Transition Fund is meant to support the creation of new workplaces, adjusted to the needs of the inhabitants and the potential of the regions, and to stimulate the local economy. It is extremely important to provide institutional and non-institutional support for those who lose their jobs or are permanently unemployed. Only local governments and organisations know how to do this properly. We cannot allow this aid to be badly prepared, especially during the onset of the economic crisis and the ongoing layoffs. Then the transformation will bring even more serious social costs.”

Izabela Zygmunt, Polish Green Network/ Bankwatch: “The funding made available from the Just Transition Fund, alongside the entire Recovery Fund presented last week in Brussels, create a unique opportunity to transform the Polish economy away from fossil-fuel dependency. Poland will not be able to simply cash the money without taking the process of transformation seriously – and, to do this, local communities most impacted by the transformation must play a central role in planning for their own future.”

For more information, contact: 

Izabela Zygmunt
Polish Green Network, CEE Bankwatch Network campaigner
Email: izabela.zygmunt@bankwatch.org
+48 50 203 69 87

Alexandra Swietlik
WWF Poland communications specialist
aswietlik@wwf.pl
+48 22 849 84 69