| Author (Person) | Chapman, Peter |
|---|---|
| Series Title | European Voice |
| Series Details | Vol.10, No.9, 11.3.04 |
| Publication Date | 11/03/2004 |
| Content Type | News |
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By Peter Chapman Date: 11/03/04 LEADING MEPs want to stop a stinging report about the European Investment Bank (EIB) being adopted because it is riddled with errors - not because it is too critical, insists Christa Randzio-Plath, chairwoman of Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee. She was responding to hard-hitting claims by the report's author, Spanish MEP Monica Ridruejo, that senior committee members wanted to ditch her work because it cited a catalogue of failures in the way the EU's in-house bank is run. These included allegations that the bank fails to observe basic rules of corporate governance and transparency and is tight-lipped about everything from directors' conflicts of interest to performance of key loans and investments. But Randzio-Plath countered: "We have always criticized the EIB because of [its role on] the environment and SMEs this is an open dialogue. But the report has so many mistakes - we are at the point where we have to see if we are overloaded with work. I cannot really follow her statements on a lot of figures. "For example, Ridruejo writes that the four largest countries get the most financing but she does not know that they have to finance projects and not their origin. "She didn't know that the largest receiver is Spain - which isn't one of the four biggest countries." Randzio-Plath said committee members would now have the chance next week to say whether or not they want to keep the report and go through the painstaking job of amending it. However, she said senior MEPs on the committee would recommend postponing all discussions on the EIB until after June's Parliamentary elections, together with a special hearing with outside experts. Ridruejo, a Spanish centre-right MEP, told this newspaper she had been requested to change her draft report in response to detailed point by point rebuttals to swathes of the document issued by EIB top brass. When she refused to do so, Ridruejo said she was told that the "most elegant" response was to unilaterally withdraw it. "I have been asked to make a pact with the EIB in this report. I have never seen that anywhere before. The supervisory entity agreeing with the entity that is being supervised - it is the world upside down. "It is really surprising that Parliament does not want to expand the supervisory role that it has been given and rather prefers to have a low-key relationship, not based on real supervision but in having an underlying agreement with the EIB," she added. Ridruejo said the committee was originally scheduled to vote on her report this week, ahead of a vote in the full Parliament, but its bosses took it off the agenda. She said the decision to hold next week's vote, instead of withdrawing her report altogether, would still have the effect of strangling it. Even if deputies call for it to be resurrected, she said there would not be enough time to debate its recommendations before MEPs skip the Parliament for their re-election campaigns. EIB spokesman Orlando Arango confirmed that bank staff had "been surprised by the tone" of the draft report. But he said his colleagues had not actively campaigned for it to be ditched - insisting, instead that it was normal to table comments on the content of a public document, including pointing out errors. He said the bank accepted many of the issues raised by the report, but contested the implication that urgent solutions needed to be found. "We have spent a year providing [the rapporteur] with information. Maybe it is good to have this discussion in a calm situation. We don't want to open a dramatic debate in the middle of an election campaign." Arango said "no one should be alarmed" by the rapporteur's comment that "unless something is done, 'ten years down the road we could have a big problem'". "We are always looking to see how we can improve governance. It is a process. It doesn't just happen every now and again." Magda Stoczkiewicz, leading the EIB campaign on behalf of CEE Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth International, said Ridruejo's report "points out the underlying lack of transparency and accountability at the EIB, failings which NGOs have been pointing out for years". "The EIB is receiving new tasks and mandates, its capital keeps on increasing, yet it is still unable to live up to the standards expected of a public institution. It's high time for some real change in this power behind the closed doors." MEPs want to prevent adoption of a report about the European Investment Bank (EIB) because it contains errors, says Christa Randzio-Plath, Chairwoman of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. The author of the report, MEP Monica Ridruejo, claims that senior members of the Committee want to abandon her report because it criticises the way in which the EIB is run. |
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