14/04/2020 (Agence Europe) – Finance Watch has called on the European Commission to reverse its decision awarding the US firm BlackRock with the contract of advising the EU on how it could better integrate environmental and social factors into its supervision of banks. In a statement dated 9 April, the organisation denounced “a clear conflict of interest” but also the inconsistency of this decision, as BlackRock is one of the “harshest critics of the EU approach to sustainable finance”. The Commission's Directorate-General for Financial Stability (DG-FISMA) defended itself on Twitter, pointing out that “BlackRock is not a 'key advisor'”, but is just carrying out a study for the European Commission simply because it won the tender. Moreover, this report will be only one of the documents that will feed into the Commission's thinking on sustainable finance," it says. (MF)