Brussels, 07/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - Welcoming to Brussels a representative of the Sarayaku Indian community from Ecuador, who had come to inform the European institutions about the negative social, environmental and public health impact of the activities of three oil companies (including Repsol of Spain and Agip of Italy) in the Amazonian region, Luxemburg Green Claude Turmes condemned the failure of voluntary social responsibility agreements by European companies operating abroad. Repsol and Agip, to whom the Ecuadorian government had given concessions on land belonging to Indian communities, signed contracts with the country's military to guarantee the security of their installations, he said. These contacts, condemned by many local ONGs, he went on, allow the oil companies to put themselves “above the law”, to ignore communities' civil rights and to exploit natural resources with no regard for the environment. Denouncing these “irresponsible practices”, Mr Turmes called on the European Commission urgently to implement binding minimum standards on European companies' social responsibilities in third countries. “The communication on this, which was to be for 2004, is still not on the table,” he complained, going on to accuse Commission DG Enterprise of limiting the scope of the Community policy on companies' social responsibility to “serve European industry interests” to the detriment of environmental imperatives.