5 ways lobbyists are using COVID-19 to weaken EU environmental laws
Are EU environmental laws and the European Green Deal really at stake because of the COVID-19 pandemic? Lobby groups in Brussels are doing their best to diminish them, Anton Lazarus, Communications Manager at European Environmental Bureau (EEB), says in his article and lists five examples of how corporate lobbyists asked for the suspension of crucial […]
Unplanned experiment reveals traffic’s real share in air pollution in Serbia
Author: Bojan Simišić, CEO @ Whale Shark Studio and EKO straža activist It’s not exactly news that Serbia has succumbed to a large extent to pollution. Pollution was perhaps the main topic this winter. One of the things that helped spreading awarness is the report by the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution for 2019, […]
Environmental organizations ask EU to stop waste burning in coal power plants in Bulgaria
Environmental lawyers at ClientEarth, Greenpeace Bulgaria and Za Zemiata are bringing a legal complaint to the European Commission to compel EU authorities to investigate and order the alleged illegal waste incineration in Bulgaria to stop. Three organizations have taken action after the Bulgarian government secretly allowed three aging coal power plants to burn unclassified waste, […]
Cadastre to enable responsible mining waste management in Serbia
The Cadastre of Mining Waste project has given Serbia a clear picture regarding this type of waste, providing a basis for assessing the state of the environment and planning further steps towards resolving mining waste, primarily at sites where harmful materials have been discovered, Ivan Janković, assistant minister at the Ministry of Mining and Energy, […]
Serbia shelves plan to introduce ecotax for households
The Government of Serbia has tweaked an executive order about the determination of activities impacting the environment just days after issuing it. It changed several details, but the most important decision was that it scrapped the provisions for an ecotax to be rolled out effectively on households. With the amendments to the decree, the cabinet […]
Serbia rolls out ecotax – firms to pay up to EUR 17,000 per year
The Government of Serbia adopted a directive dividing the corporate sector into three categories according to environmental impact and imposed ecological taxation. Firms are in four groups with regard to size. Persons taxable with property tax were also included at the bottom, with a levy of RSD 1,200 (EUR 10.2) per annum. The ecotax was […]
KEK to get EUR 76 million grant to cut pollution from Kosovo B power plant
Kosovo* will receive a EUR 76 million grant from the EU’s Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) for a project to reduce air pollution from the Kosovo B coal-fired power plant, the Kosovo Energy Corporation (KEK) has announced, local media reported. The implementation of the project, which involves the replacement of the Kosovo B power plant’s […]
Nearly 200 families hit by pollution from Veliki Crljeni open-pit coal mine
Residents of Veliki Crljeni, a suburban settlement only 50 kilometers from the center of Belgrade, again wrote to the Serbian President and the Prime Minister over the past week, demanding that institutions and the state, the owner of power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS), resolve the pollution problem that has been plaguing them for more than […]