Publications

Bankwatch's Serbian member group Center for Ecology and Sustainable Development (CEKOR) has worked together with three Serbian human rights organisations on a shadow report complementing the country's official statement to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Analysing the legal and factual status of Roma in Serbia, the shadow report draws heavily on examples from the Gazela bridge rehabilitation project in Belgrade.

Bankwatch's comments support the introduction of a biowaste directive as the only way to implement the EU waste hierarchy in central-eastern European (CEE) countries.

For several years now, Bankwatch has monitored EU budget support in east European Neighbourhood Partnership (ENP) countries. In our submission to the public consultation we reflect on how EU budget support can become more effective and efficient for countries within the ENP/ENPI framework.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is considering financing the Nabucco gas pipeline project. Should the IFC decide to finance the project, it risks repeating the serious economic, environmental, social and human rights mistakes associated with the Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan (BTC) and Chad-Cameroon pipeline projects and involving the World Bank Group in another highly problematic, politicized and economically and environmentally unsustainable project.

Bankwatch welcomes the European Commissions "A resource efficient Europe - flagship initiative of the Europe 2020 Strategy" as an effort to build a holistic approach to resource efficiency. This letter suggests further priority measures that should guide this initiative and proposes an integration of resource efficiency in different EU policies and actions.

While the EIB has repeatedly assured of its efforts to improve the project's planning and public consultation process, recent developments show that these efforts have not been successful. We believe the time has now come for the bank to clearly and publicly withdraw from the project.

In 2007 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) provided a USD 90 million loan to the second largest supermarket operator in Ukraine - the Furshet Group - for the regional expansion of its chain in Ukraine and Moldova. The aim of this research was to examine labour/gender conditions at supermarkets in respect of employee rights and discrimination at work, resulting in recommendations how Furshet and the EBRD can improve the employees' situation.