21 October 2021

The European Investment Bank has financed a series of damaging hydropower projects since 2010 which underline the need to tighten its environmental and social standards, according to a new report published today by CEE Bankwatch Network and EuroNatur.

The report examines eight hydropower schemes in central and eastern Europe supported or currently being considered for financing by the EU’s house bank. It finds that neither the Bank’s current rules, nor its proposed new standards published for consultation in June 2021, are sufficient to prevent the damage from such projects...

A particular problem is the Bank’s financing via intermediaries – chiefly commercial banks and national promotional banks. In southeast Europe alone, the EIB has provided at least 27 intermediated loans for hydropower plants since 2010, though the names of many of the projects remain unknown given that the Bank does not publish information on the final beneficiaries of such investments...

For example, the EIB financed the six small Tearce and Brza Voda plants in North Macedonia via the Development Bank of North Macedonia. The plants have been built in the heart of what is now the Shar Mountain National Park. They block the Bistrica and Brza Voda rivers, preventing movement of river fauna over stretches totalling 10 kilometres. The plants’ access roads have also most likely facilitated logging of pristine forest in the area...