In recent years Georgia’s government has sought to position the country as a future regional renewable energy hub. Governmental plans include the construction of transmission lines and numerous hydropower plants (HPPs), in order to ensure electricity exports to Turkey and subsequently to gain access to the south-east European market by 2015-2017. The number and technical design of the planned HPPs do not comply with the principles of sustainable development, and they are bound to have serious negative impacts on the environment.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has developed draft methodologies in order to assess project greenhouse gas emissions from its projects. Bankwatch's comments provide recommendations on how to improve the methodology used in order to support the EU’s climate goals. Our comments primarily focus on how baselines are set and the treatment of scope 3 emissions. The document also discusses the way in which we believe the bank needs to use the outcomes from its GHG calculations.

One of Bankwatch's main concerns with the EBRD's municipal and environmental infrastructure strategy is the bank's approach towards public-private partnerships, which one the one hand is more cautious than before. On the other hand however, while the bank's analysis recognises some of the drawbacks, it still too openly promotes them.

In light of the new proposed Regulation for the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA), Bankwatch has compiled case studies from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia to illustrate the lack of political will to properly implement EU principles on public participation. This represents a significant problem in the implementation of the IPA funds in these countries.

These comments from the Bulgarian Civic Coalition for sustainable use of EU funds identifies problematic issues and discrepancies between transport policy documents at EU and Bulgarian level. It offers concrete suggestions to overcome those problems and to improve the decision making process of the Bulgaria Operational Programme for Transport for the period 2014-2020.