At the beginning of 2008, RREC jointly with Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary) won a tender on providing technical assistance in organization of public consultations on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) projects based on newly adopted regulation in the field of environment and social policy and public information policy.

Public consultations were held in March, 2008 in Moscow in parallel with the similar meetings conducted in Bishkek, Tbilisi, Budapest, Belgrade and London.

The participants of the consultations from the non-governmental sector of Ukraine, Moldova, Moscow and other regions of Russia marked positive role of the international financial organizations, and EBRD in particular, in introducing environmental and social standards into their clients’ activities and stimulating in such a way development of the national policies and compliance with the internationally recognized standards and practices .

It was also mentioned that new version of the regulation took into account the comments received during the consultations on the previous version of the regulation, which demonstrates the efficiency of the consultation procedure.

During the discussion of the regulatory documents, the participants outlined importance of such strategic documents, which are harmonized with the EU regulations in the field of environmental protection, suggested to broaden public participation in the development of the EBRD policies and ensure access to the reports of the public consultations at the EBRD’s web-site.