CEE

In a bid to help the recession-hit Ukrainian economy, the country’s government has significantly reduced regulatory obligations for businesses and state-owned companies. This includes Ukraine’s nuclear power plants which have been plagued in the recent past by ageing reactors and accidents and whose safety upgrades are receiving support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Euratom. In this letter Ukraine Bankwatch member group is asking the EBRD to pressure the government to ensure that the Ukrainian state nuclear regulator SRNIU is able to carry out inspections of nuclear power plants.

As the negotiations on the EU funds for 2014-2020 are coming to an end, NGO partners from CEE countries conclude on their involvement during the “programming”, the process of elaboration and consultation of the future EU Cohesion Policy spending plans. Whereas some improvements compared to the previous period can be stated, an even formal compliance with the European Code of Conduct on Partnership is not always guaranteed.

The letters were sent shortly before the EBRD's board of directors are to approve a loan for the Naftogaz Emergency Pipeline Upgrade and Modernisation project. Since the project has not yet passed through all environmental and social procedures, Bankwatch asked the EBRD's president and its board in separate letters to postpone the board decision.

• Letter to the EBRD president >> (pdf)

In October this year, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) approved an up to EUR 50 million loan to a Belarusian subsidiary of the Austrian company Kronospan for the expansion of a particleboard facility at Smorgon in the Grodno region of Belarus. Belarus will provide a guaranteed return on investment for both Kronospan and the EBRD. With the country’s rich wood resources, generous state tax incentives, weak legal environment, toothless trade unions, cheap labour and a generally stifled civil society, the EBRD and its client are not likely to run into the same environmental and legal difficulties experienced by Kronospan in other eastern European countries.

Road construction in Poland can be a cause for great controversy, particularly when incomprehensible road designs clash with nature.