January 10, 2022 | Read more The European Investment Bank (EIB) has suspended the disbursement of a EUR 200 million loan intended to facilitate a dramatic increase in passenger turnover at Hungary’s main international airport following an investigation by the Bank’s Complaints Mechanism that found that no analysis had been done to assess the air pollution, noise pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that the development would generate, in breach of the Bank’s own policy as well as EU environmental law.
December 22, 2021 | Read more The European Union’s next long term budget and recovery package is a generational opportunity to tackle the climate crisis and build resilient societies. Yet, a lack of transparency and unwillingness to engage stakeholders, firstly with the recovery plans and now the Cohesion Funds, threatens to imperil a bounceback instead of steering the European Green Deal.
December 20, 2021 | Read more Residents of Almaty’s Kairat district are being suffocated by an illegal depot for diesel buses. They call on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to find a solution before the Bank approves a new loan for green public transport in Kazakhstan’s largest city.
December 17, 2021 | Read more What were once iconic views of Georgia’s beautiful Khada Valley are slowly disappearing. Now, when you drive up the damaged road towards a narrow, 12-kilometre-long gorge, also known as the ‘valley of 60 towers’, the first thing you see is no longer the famous tower of Iukho village. Instead, a massive, white and blue metal construction site appears. Trucks, roaring and echoing through the mountains, drive back and forth near cultural heritage monuments to provide materials for the Kvesheti-Kobi road towards Russia.
December 15, 2021 | Read more The public has largely been kept in the dark by Member State governments in central and eastern Europe about their plans to move EU regions away from a dependency on coal, leaving the door open for other funding schemes to support fossil fuels projects.
December 13, 2021 | Read more Bankwatch member group Za Zemiata illuminates Sofia’s thermal power plant to protest plans for the construction of a waste incineration facility that would poison the capital.
December 3, 2021 | Read more Bosnia and Herzegovina will be subject to a fact-finding mission for its failure to protect the upper Neretva river from eight planned hydropower plants, following a decision taken by the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention (1) today. The Convention’s decision comes in response to a complaint submitted by environmental organisations last year.
November 30, 2021 | Read more A public loan guarantee for the planned Tuzla 7 coal power plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina is illegal under the Energy Community Treaty, the Ministerial Council of the Energy Community has confirmed today (Tuesday). If realized, the project would aggravate Tuzla’s air pollution and prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina decarbonising its economy for decades to come.
November 30, 2021 | Read more A series of damaging hydropower plants on the Iskar river shows why the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) needs to be tightened.
November 29, 2021 | Read more Romanian environmental NGOs Agent Green, Bankwatch Romania and Eco-civica were summoned last Friday to a hearing in front of a parliamentary inquiry committee this Thursday (2 December) in what appears to be a thinly-veiled attempt to shift the blame for increasing electricity and gas prices onto civil society organisations.
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