CEE Bankwatch Network

Please find attached CEE Bankwatch Network's comments on the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on speeding up environmental assessments.

For 30 years, the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Bankwatch Network has been monitoring publicly financed projects and promoting environmentally, socially and economically sustainable alternatives. In this period, EU environmental law has become an increasingly important asset in our work. People and the environment in our region have benefited from EU safeguards through successive rounds of enlargement, and todays accession countries must be able to do so as well. Enforcement, as ever, needs to be improved, but EU environmental law has proven its worth and is admired across the world. It is one of the major factors that makes the EU liveable. Key safeguards like the Environmental Impact…

We monitor the activities of the international financial institutions (IFIs) which operate in the region and the spending of Cohesion, Recovery and Just Transition Funds in CEE, and propose constructive alternatives to IFI and EU policies and projects in the region.
Bankwatch is working to prevent negative environmental and social impacts of IFI or EU financed projects, and promotes public participation and access to information about IFI activities and European cohesion policy across our region.
At EU level, Bankwatch is active on the various EU funding schemes that relate to the energy and environmental transition, such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Cohesion policy funds (such as the European Regional Development Fund, the Cohesion Fund regulation and the Just Transition Fund), the Modernisation Fund, the InvestEU programme, the Connecting Europe Facility, Western Balkans Investment Framework and Ukraine Reconstruction Facility.
Bankwatch works with EU institutions regarding the implementation of recovery and resilience plans, the programming of the EU funds, as well as the update of national strategies (such as the National Energy and Climate Plans) by Member States and their assessment by the European Commission.
In its work relating to the EIB, Bankwatch influences and interacts with EU institutions regarding the various policy guidelines of the Bank such as the revision of climate energy and transport policies.
Bankwatch aims to inform the decision makers on next MFF on the successful practices and bottlenecks with energy transformation and biodiversity financing, as well about just transition impact in the regions affected by industrial transition. We also collect information and feedback from the local actors and activists on the Green Deal objectives uptake.
Bankwatch works also on the transposition, implementation and monitoring of various files such as the Energy Union Governance Regulation, the Air Quality Directive, the National Emission Ceiling Directive, Industrial Emissions Directive and Large Combustion Plants Directive, also in relation to the Energy Community Treaty, the Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment and the Aarhus Convention and other EU environmental legislation (Birds and Habitats Directives, Water Framework Directive).