CEE

Twenty years of limited – if not downright poor – transitional progress has demonstrated the inability of European and global institutions to effectively impact development processes in Ukraine.

New analysis from CEE Bankwatch Network of how the EBRD conducts its financing and economic advisory activities finds serious deficiencies in the bank's overall 'market-oriented' approach and catalogues a range of startling EBRD interventions in central and eastern Europe (CEE) and further afield that should prompt deeper examination of the bank's promotional mantra “We invest in changing lives”.

The EBRD's board of directors is expected, on the eve of the bank's annual meeting in Warsaw, to approve new 'good governance' policies that will have significant bearing on the institution's future activities. The EBRD's Environmental and Social Policy, its Public Information Policy and the Rules of Procedure for the EBRD Project Complaints Mechanism have been the feature of multi-stakeholder consultations across the EBRD's regions of operation in 2013 and into 2014.

Environmental writer Roger Manser explains how the warnings of his 1993 book were ignored, and why ambitious green financing action is still a big need in central and eastern Europe.

Harsh, embedded economic realities such as widespread, high unemployment across central and eastern Europe, as well as the discernible trend of democratic retrenchment in several EBRD recipient countries, are resulting in very mixed feelings about the transition process in this year of important anniversaries. This new analysis of how the EBRD conducts its financing and economic advisory activities finds serious deficiencies in the bank's overall 'market-oriented' approach and catalogues a range of startling EBRD interventions.

Public finance can play a role in ensuring nuclear safety and the transparency and accountability of government decisions related to nuclear energy by encouraging governments to fully apply Espoo procedures at earlier stages of the programme or plan and to provide more information about loan conditionalities. However, only a limited positive effect has been seen in Ukraine due in part to a lack of transparency by the financial institutions and to the selective application of convention requirements.

In 2013 the EBRD approved a loan of EUR 35 million to Danosha, a Ukrainian industrial pig farming company. Categorised as ‘B’ by the bank, the project didn't require an Environmental Impact Assessment or public participation. Yet experience shows that Danosha’s activities are associated with adverse environmental and social impacts, and the situation has been worsened by the fact that the company does not publish any information about its impacts on the environment, public health and safety at its farms.

Commissioned by the European Commission, the European Investment Bank assessed the feasibility of a Euratom loan to Ukraine's state-nuclear energy operator Energoatom. This censored version of the document was made available on request.

Issue 58 of Bankwatch Mail, published as stakeholders meet in the European Parliament to discuss the future of the 'Energy Community'. Comprising the countries of the western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine, the Energy Community aims primarily to extend EU internal energy policy to south east Europe and the Black Sea region. Its modus operandi and achievements are now being evaluated at high level, which - as this issue shows - is undoubtedly necessary given the stunning number of highly questionable coal and lignite fired power plants that are proceeding in various Energy Community members.