CEE

The announcement of German energy giant RWE to reconsider its plans for the Nabucco pipeline is just the last in a series of confusingly conflicting signals regarding the fate of this gargantuan project.

As pressures mount on western European banks to shore up capital ratios and with 2012 economic growth forecasts for Europe falling close to zero, officials from the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and several international financial institutions (IFIs) are meeting today in Vienna with regulators from CEE countries to discuss a second round of financial support for a fragile CEE banking sector.

A study from the Czech Republic vividly confirms the positive economic impact of public support schemes for energy efficiency investments. The future Cohesion Policy can offer valuable stimuli for such schemes – if EU Member States set the right priorities now.

By allowing open and inclusive consultations on the future Cohesion Policy, Latvia is not only devising its national position in a more democratic way than other EU Member States. It is also setting an example for actually getting people interested in it.

The Czech renewable energy industry last week received a strong blow from our very own Parliament which approved measures that will likely smother the sector in a bill ironically entitled the „Renewable energy sources support bill.”

By requesting a number of changes at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Parliament has confirmed at least some of Bankwatch's criticism of the bank's mode of operation and (in a subtle way) also its overall approach.