The NGO Greenpeace has called on the European Central Bank (ECB) to change its rules on the collateral that private banks provide when refinancing themselves with it, in order to stop “favouring” fossil fuel companies on Wednesday 10 March, on the eve of a meeting of the ECB’s Governing Council.
“The ECB must at once exclude these toxic assets and change the rules to tackle the climate emergency we live in”, said Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
The NGO draws on its new report published the same day with the New Economics Foundation (NEF), SOAS University of London, the University of the West of England and the University of Greenwich, according to which 61 companies active in fossil fuels, including Shell, Total, Eni, OMV and Repsol, issued 756 bonds (with an outstanding amount of around €300 billion) deemed eligible as guarantees by the ECB on 26 November 2020.
This volume represents 59% of the corporate bonds that the ECB has accepted as collateral, while the overall contribution of these companies to employment and gross value added in the EU “is less than 24% and 29%, respectively”, the report points out.
According to the authors of the report, the ECB rules thereby implicitly encourage fossil fuel companies to make increasing use of bonds subsidised by the Bank’s guarantee framework.
See the report: https://bit.ly/3vcaEYf (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)