Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership Fund

Many countries in the Northern Dimension – a broad area around the Barents and Baltic seas – suffer from pollution caused by poor waste-water treatment, insufficient energy efficiency measures and inadequate municipal, agricultural and nuclear waste management. Several poorer countries in the Northern Dimension Area lack the resources and expertise to tackle these environmental issues and areas such as north-west Russia need additional funds to make environmental projects commercially viable.

To help tackle this problem, the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP) provides a strong international framework that promotes cooperation between partner governments, the European Commission, donors and international financial institutions (IFIs). The NDEP framework enable the creation of financing structures that combine loans, grants and local budget funding which can be used for priority environmental investments.

The NDEP operations were split into two windows of activities: nuclear safety with grants funds of EUR 167 million and environmental investments with EUR 182 milion. Nuclear safety projects were fully grant funded and focus on spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste management in the north-west of Russia. The environmental projects combined NDEP grants and IFI loans for municipal infrastructure, mainly wastewater treatment in north-west Russia and Belarus. The overall objective of the Fund was to improve the ecological status of the Baltic and Barents Seas with cross-border impacts.  EBRD acts as the fund manager of NDEP. The Fund was terminated in February 2024 and closure process is now on-going.