4 June 2020

The EU recovery programme is at odds with its planned European Green Deal.

The European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank support big corporations through non-transparent processes, without taking into account social, environmental or climate criteria and without having binding criteria to stop corporate tax evasion and dividend distributions.

The spread of COVID-19 and its resulting health emergency have brought an unprecedented economic slowdown. Consequently, public institutions have activated plans, mechanisms and instruments that ostensibly aim to stop the shock, reactivate the economy and restore pre-pandemic normality. In this context, large corporations are playing a central role similar to that of the banking system during the 2008 financial crisis: at a time of high uncertainty, a few powerful actors benefit from public support, while the huge majority is put in second place...

At a time of pandemic, it is curious to see how the ECB has carried out operations to purchase bonds from one of the world’s most polluting corporations. In spite of the historical decline of oil prices, the ECB bought bonds from Shell, the Dutch-British oil and gas company which suffered a drop in its market value of 45% since the beginning of the year.

[refers to Repsol, Shell, Total Capital, E.ON, Airbus and BMW]