Economic justice policy officer
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WikiLeaks cable confirms NGOs’ worst fears about Belene nuke
January 3, 2011 | Read more
A US diplomatic cable, originating from the WikiLeaks organisation and published in the Guardian newspaper just before Christmas, relates the serious misgivings of US Ambassador in Bulgaria, Nancy McEldowney, over the planned Belene nuclear power plant in Bulgaria.
While the EIB has repeatedly assured of its efforts to improve the project’s planning and public consultation process, recent developments show that these efforts have not been successful. We believe the time has now come for the bank to clearly and publicly withdraw from the project.
While the EBRD has repeatedly expressed its concerns about the project development process for this project, it has so far refrained from making any final decisions on whether to finance the road or not. We believe the time has now come for the bank to clearly and publicly withdraw from the project.
In 2008, the EIB’s deployed an additional EUR 15 billion to its ‘global loan’ lending – as a response to the financial crisis and the difficulty for small and media sized enterprises to access finance. In essence, the package appears to have remained to a large extent in the intermediary banks, the initial recipients of the funding.
In the face of official EU statements stressing the need to decarbonise Europe’s transport sector, our analysis has found that a rise in EIB lending between 2006 and 2009 for roads and aviation has coincided with a dramatic decrease in EIB lending for urban public transport.
