Despite the remote location, the culture festival We Are Svaneti brought together people from three continents and helped young Svans to become aware of their communities’ unique traditions.

As a civil society organisation operating across central and eastern Europe, Bankwatch views its role as a watchdog on how effectively the EU funds are being spent in our countries seriously – with billions of euros on the line, we need to ensure that spending decisions are taken democratically, with transparency to the fore and with stakeholders having a real say in how scarce public investment money is being deployed.

New EU rules entering into force today, to limit pollution from power plants, will also apply in most Western Balkan countries. But the region’s governments are so far acting like they don’t exist.

With new legislation, Bulgaria’s government is trying to limit inconvenient civil engagement in projects it deems strategic.

In a relatively small country like Latvia, the general public is used to having its say and being able to influence things in the public realm – our opinion usually means something, and access to decision makers and communication with government officials is commonplace. Latvians, though, are not like the French, revolution is not in our DNA, and protests or strikes happen very rarely in Latvia.

As it nears two years of a Bankwatch visit to the copper smelter in Namibia and the uncovering of an unsafe arsenic disposal site, a planned expansion has revealed so far undisclosed environmental information.