| Groups formally challenge European Investment Bank for ignoring its own rules and signing €250m loan to steel giant |
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17 August 2010 | Press release The European Investment Bank (EIB), the lending bank of the European Union, has repeatedly ignored its own rules in order to approve a low-interest public loan of €250m to ArcelorMittal, a global steel company that enjoyed revenues of $65.1bn in 2009. Non-profit environmental law organisation ClientEarth and international NGO network Bankwatch have submitted a complaint to the EIB alleging irregularities in the “Steel product and processing R&D Facility” loan signed by the bank on 15 July 2010. This is the second complaint that the two organisations have made to the EIB in relation to the loan. Anais Berthier, environmental lawyer at ClientEarth, said: “We made our initial complaint on March 3 explaining that the EIB had not acted properly in approving the loan. We are now challenging the bank’s refusal to investigate the complaint properly before signing the loan. The way that the EIB is conducting itself on this suggests a worrying lack of willingness to comply with its own rules.” The purpose of the loan is for ArcelorMittal to finance its Research and Development (R&D) department to find ways of meeting its CO2 reduction and environmental targets. At the same time, ArcelorMittal is set to become the largest beneficiary of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) - potentially making £1bn in windfall profits from the scheme by 2012. The EIB is legally prohibited from granting finance to a project when “finance is available from sources other than the Bank on reasonable terms.” ArcelorMittal, which has an industrial presence in over 20 countries spanning four continents, calls itself ‘the world’s leading steel company’ and says its production of 73.2m tonnes of crude steel in 2009 represented eight per cent of world steel output. Pippa Gallop, Research Co-ordinator at CEE Bankwatch, said: “If the EIB is to hand out low-interest loans to a company such as ArcelorMittal, the least it can do is to prove that it properly assessed that the company could not finance the project from other resources." ENDS To read a full copy of the complaint, click here For all media enquiries, please contact George Leigh | Communications officer | t. +44 (0) 203 030 5951 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Notes to editors: For more information on ArcelorMittal’s emissions see Sandbag’s (UK based NGO focused on emissions trading) briefing ‘The case of ArcelorMittal’: http://sandbag.org.uk/files/sandbag.org.uk/The_Case_of_ArcelorMittal.pdf About ClientEarth ClientEarth is a non-profit environmental law organisation based in London, Brussels, Paris and Warsaw. We are lawyers working at the interface of law, science and policy. Using the power of the law, we develop legal strategies and tools to address major environmental issues. As legal experts working in the public interest, we act to strengthen the work of our partners – both governments and NGOs. www.clientearth.org |
