participation

As the Georgian government moves ahead with its plans for increasing the country’s hydropower capacity, local communities are being sidelined in the process of compensation payments.

With crude manipulations, the Bulgarian government is trying to push through a contended motorway route that would damage the country’s biodiversity hotspot in breach of EU law and international conventions. It expects that the European Commission will sit, watch and pay for it.

French President Emmanuel Macron is right to propose public debates on the Future of Europe. But the EU budget is where change will first manifest itself.

The use of international financial institutions to manage projects within the Green Climate Fund framework has been criticised as too far removed from communities and those affected by the investments. Recently approved projects, the biggest of them administered by the European Investment Bank confirm this view, despite willingness to include civil society.

The key to unlocking a more inspiring and politically winnable New Vision for a strong Europe may well be the next European budget.

Although not an institution that typically receives much fanfare, the export credit agency (ECA) in the Czech Republic has a poor track record worthy of more scrutiny.

The European Investment Bank’s failure in safeguarding the most vulnerable groups in its projects shows it is ill-equipped to help refugees and host communities in the European Union’s neighbourhood. A new report explains the bank’s weaknesses in identifying and responding to human rights risks.

Georgian Urban Energy (GUE), the company in charge of constructing the Paravani hydropower plant (HPP), has been keeping secret a study on the potential flooding risks associated with the facility, despite requests and promises from the EBRD that such an analysis would be made public.