Four years following the approval of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's Independent Recourse Mechanism (IRM) policy and three years after finalising its procedures, CEE Bankwatch has put forward NGO experiences and assessed how the Bank's compliance mechanism is functioning. This authors believe that the IRM, as it was designed, is effective in preventing requests to look into the compliance of certain projects with EBRD policies. They maintain that the IRM restricts the participation of NGOs and it is not effective after the approval of projects. The Bankwatch study includes a legal analysis of the IRM's compliance with the principles of the Aarhus Convention which finds that the mechanism's limitations do not comply with the Convention and as a result narrow the opportunities of public involvement in the review.
