• NGOs call for funding to stop after protected nature reserve damaged

    Environmental groups in Slovakia have called on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to review its decision taken last month to give a €250 million loan for building the D1 motorway.

    They feel the decision to approve the loan for the first phase of the D1 was taken too quickly, as the Commission is still not satisfied that the assessment of the project’s impact on site protected under the Natura 2000 scheme has been carried out properly. And now evidence has emerged that building work has damaged a 15,000-year-old peat bog in a nature reserve protected by both national legislation and the EU habitats directive.