EU neighbourhood

The Ohrid-Peshtani expressway project - financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development via a EUR 160 million loan for the National Roads Programme - involves the construction of a new section on the A3 express to the Albanian border. The new 12.5 kilometre section is planned to pass through the Galicica national park - a rare and important natural site with
abundant biodiversity, that was listed as an emerald site (a future Natura 2000
site) and was designated in 2014 part of UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

MHP is at the centre of concern for local communities and civil society organisations in Ukraine, because of the way the company engages stakeholders, acquires land, and impacts the environment, water and the local economic development. Since 2010 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has approved three loans for MHP, totalling USD 205 million.

Whether or not the company is in compliance with Ukrainian law, local people think they are not adequately protected and do not have an equal voice against a large corporation if it decides to begin construction.

Protests have in recent weeks broken out across rural Georgia after construction resumed on several large hydropower projects financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Demonstrators have complained that the projects were repeatedly decided behind closed doors, and that poor assessments of the social and environmental consequences mean their livelihoods are under threat.

In October 2015 the independent Project Complaint Mechanism (PCM) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development found that the bank breached its environmental and social policy with regards to safeguarding the rights of communities impacted by mining operations of the Serbian state energy company EPS. The EBRD responded by requiring EPS to develop “an overall Resettlement Framework which will apply to all of its activities” and by committing to monitor the implementation of the plan.