Balkans

Unsuccessful in making a coal power plant reduce abhorrent pollution levels, the village of Golemo Selo, Bulgaria is trying to “move” to a new municipality, hoping to have more say in matters concerning its citizens’ health and livelihoods.

Levels of particulate matter (fine dust) in Rosia de Jiu, Romania were up to 20 times above the limit suggested by the World Health Organisation, show the results of our independent monitoring.

Enver Hoxha, the former communist dictator in Albania, ruled in such a bizarre way that he found himself ostracised by other communist rulers. Among others he flooded the country of 3 million people with 750 000 concrete bunkers. Those bunkers were built ignoring people, nature but also military rules - as some of them were facing each other.

The European Union’s and China’s joint commitment to climate action is tarnished by Chinese support for and the EU’s neglect of coal projects in the Balkans, as a new briefing shows. But it is still not too late to change course.

We are passing through the canyon of the river Vrbas, in north-west Bosnia-Herzegovina. I am looking through a car window, mouth wide open in awe. While I look up to the rocky, edgy peaks hundreds of meters above and down to the heavenly blue river, I am wondering why anyone would want to dam this river, flood the canyon and destroy its beauty.

Then again, rather than seeing beauty, hydropower companies see wasted water resources, or in the words of a Bosnian official “euros flowing away in vain.”

Green Home, a Montenegrin environmental non-governmental organisation, on Friday submitted a complaint to the Administrative Court of Montenegro requesting the cancellation of the environmental approval for the controversial Pljevlja II coal power plant the government seeks to build.

Brussels may fine Bulgaria for its excessive air pollution. But living in Pernik, the most polluted town in Europe, remains a hazard to peoples’ health as the results of Bankwatch’s independent dust monitoring show.

Life is a living hell for families in Vreoci, Serbia, where lignite excavators have almost reached their houses. As the mine’s financier, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development must not allow Serbian state utility EPS to create a fait accompli that leaves locals with scraps and without home.