Publications

With the European Investment Bank having recently postponed the annual face-to-face dialogue with NGOs that the bank’s former president Philippe Maystadt initiated in autumn 2011, it was good to see new EIB president Werner Hoyer being put on the spot in September by MEPs du…

It has been a busy time of late for the planned EUR 800 million, 500 MW Plomin C coal power plant. The Croatian government is pressing ahead with the project under the assumption that it will – along with the equally controversial EBRD-financed Ombla hydropower plant – save…

The European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have been awarded some of the worst transparency scores for international finance institutions in this year’s Aid Transparency Index, published in early October by the campaign group Publis…

Investments in transport infrastructure, particularly in the road sector, in the Czech Republic are stark reminders of wider failures in the country’s decision making that have left public confidence in national officialdom at all time lows. Some of these investments have al…

This summer Latvia’s minister for environment and regional development, along with some other like-minded politicians, appeared to kick-start a green revolution by proposing to set a ‘green vision’ for the small Baltic country’s National Development Plan (NDP) for the 2014-2…

Bankwatch, Friends of the Earth Europe and WWF have collaborated to produce a new map that illustrates some of the best practice Cohesion policy investments in infrastructure projects to be realised during the 2007-13 financial period.

The negotiations over the future EU budget for 2014-20 are well underway now, often being described under the epitaph ‘EU budget battle’. We tolerate no blood-letting on the pages of Bankwatch Mail. So Keti Medarova-Bergstrom, Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute for Europ…

How much investment money is needed to create 60,000 jobs, and how much to save half a million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually? These are the kinds of calculations that a new Bankwatch study has been making with an eye on the uses of the EU’s future Cohesion policy funds in…

In recent years Sofia municipality has been looking for a modern waste management solution, but all in the wrong direction. At the end of 2011, the Bulgarian capital submitted its latest application for funding to the European Commission. Regrettably, this featured a capital…

Entries have started arriving at Bankwatch Towers with concepts and ideas for sustainable, community-based projects – the kind of projects that we think should be receiving much more support from the EU budget. If you live in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Latvia, Hu…

Back in August, the Czech Republic’s handling of municipal waste attracted criticism from the European Commission, when it was identified as one of several EU member states not doing enough to recycle as well as actually infringing European legislation.

It is now widely acknowledged that there is enormous potential to reap environmental, social and economic dividends through improving the energy efficiency of Europe’s 160 million buildings. And yet actual investments in energy efficiency measures remain very small in compar…