EU

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the China-led financial institution, has emerged as a multilateral development bank with the backing of 57 members in record time. Jin Liqun, president designate of the new financial institution set up to provide financing for infrastructure projects in south east Asia and countries along the Silk Road route in South Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the periphery of Europe, has declared that the AIIB will be a ‘lean, clean, and green’ institution which upholds the highest standards of 21st century governance. Early doubts, though, hang over these aspirations.

In the run-up to, during and now, with a global deal reached, after the Paris climate summit, the world’s largest public lender, the European Investment Bank (EIB), is positioning itself as a climate pioneer. But is the bank really fit for this role? Can the EIB make a break from its history of financing fossil fuels and polluting forms of transportation after decades of cosy relations with the biggest culprits?

The MDB Climate Change Scorecard, published by Bank Information Center and Sierra Club during COP21, highlights how none of the world’s biggest multi-lateral development banks is on track to help keep the world below 2 degrees warming, and reveals how the seven banks in question – including the World Bank, the EIB and the EBRD – are continuing to support fossil fuel projects in developing countries.

As efforts to realise a mega gas pipeline along the Southern Gas Corridor intensify, Re:Common’s Elena Gerebizza explains how democratic rights are at stake – and are being trampled on.

A barely eight kilometre long section of an express road in central Poland is becoming another battlefield in the long-running conflict between Polish road authorities on one side and European biodiversity protection laws, and environmental NGOs trying to uphold them, on the other. Except this time, it’s not just about the law – it’s also about the money.

An assessment of the application of the “European Code of Conduct on Partnership” during the establishment of the national implementation bodies and the first phase of ESI Funds implementation in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia.

A wave of hydropower development fuelled by European public funding and EU companies is endangering pristine river environments in the Balkans.