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[Press releases] European bank rightly withdraws from controversial Ethiopian dam but decision brings more questions than answers

21 July 2010

A coalition of international non-governmental organisations welcomed this week's announcement by the European Investment Bank that it would no longer consider financing for the Gibe III hydroelectric project in Ethiopia.

Citing that the "Ethiopian government has found alternative sources of finances," the bank's decision follows the signing of a memorandum of understanding between EEPCO, the Ethiopian state-owned electric utility, and Dongfang Electric Machinery Corporation, a Chinese state-owned company, to provide electrical and mechanical equipment for the project.
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[Policy Documents] Counter Balance statement on the Commission proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and the Council granting a EU guarantee to the EIB against losses under loans and guarantees for projects outside the EU

9 June 2010

The Commission proposal for a new European Investment Bank (EIB) mandate to lend outside the European Union contains several improvements compared to the previous version and includes various points that were raised by NGOs in the past. However, it leaves many concrete aspects to further decisions and allows a broad interpretation of important obligations.

Read Counter Balance statement on the Commission's proposal here

[Press releases] European Investment Bank Annual General Meeting 8th June 2010: A Word of Warning

8 June 2010

It’s the European Investment Bank’s Annual General Meeting 2010. That means lots of self-congratulatory back-slapping and carefully selected statistics being waved around by men in suits.

Don’t get us wrong: we at Counter Balance may be consistent critics of the EIB, but we do recognise some of the efforts the Bank is making to be less of a dinosaur. Its emphasis on renewables, SMEs, climate protection and fighting corruption all sound good, at least on the surface.

[Video] European Investment Bank: a stormy future for development

8 June 2010

Counter Balance presents a new cartoon questioning the impossible number of contradictory tasks the EIB has been given - will the EIB manage to cope with them all?
EU Member States and the European Commission urgently need to resolve this!

Watch the cartoon on our YouTube channel

[Press releases] The European Parliament, the democratic EU institution, vindicates Counter Balance positions and concerns on the European Investment Bank

6 May 2010

Counter Balance, the NGO coalition that monitors the European Investment Bank, welcomes today’s European Parliament (EP) resolution on the EIB, especially its recommendations on closer supervision, greater transparency and access to information.

Counter Balance concurs with many of the recommendations of the EP.
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[Policy letters] Counter Balance briefing on the Wise Persons’ Panel report evaluating the external lending mandate of the European Investment Bank

28 April 2010

Counter Balance admires the extensive analysis that the Wise Persons’ Panel has undertaken of EIB lending activities outside the European Union, and particularly its willingness to begin to address the developmental impacts of that lending. There are many proposals put forward by the panel that can help European development finance begin to aid genuine development—as well as several that would in our view have the opposite effect.

Download the full briefing here
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[Press releases] EIB Quits Tenke Fungurume Mining Project: It’s Time for Extractives Review

20 April 2010

The EIB confirmed today that it will not finance the first phase of the Tenke Fungurume mining project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Tenke project, one of the largest copper-cobalt deposits in the world and majority owned by the giant American mining conglomerate Freeport McMoRan, is notorious for lack of transparency and corruption allegations surrounding it.

[Press releases] NGO response to Salini's misinformation on the “STOP GIBE 3” campaign

2 April 2010

Counter Balance, Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale (CRBM), Friends of Lake Turkana (FoLT) and International Rivers launched a campaign last week to halt the Gibe 3 Dam in Ethiopia (www.stopgibe3.org ). The Gibe 3 project contractor, Salini Costruttori, reacted publishing misleading and highly debatable information in two related press releases dated March 26 and March 30.

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[Press releases] International NGOs Launch Campaign to Stop Man-Made Disaster in Ethiopia

23 March 2010

Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale * Counter Balance * Friends of Lake Turkana * International Rivers

Joint press release

International NGOs are calling for the halt of the destructive Gibe 3 Dam on Ethiopia's Omo River. The dam threatens the land and livelihoods of 500,000 tribal people in Southern Ethiopia and Northern Kenya. By ending the river’s natural flood cycle, the dam would destroy harvests and grazing lands along the river banks, and destroy fisheries in Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake. The dam will devastate the unique culture and ecosystems of the Lower Omo Valley and Lake Turkana, both recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Online petition, information and documents are available here: stopgibe3.org

[Press releases] Corporate welfare and development deceptions: Why the European Investment Bank isn’t fit for EU development work

25 February 2010

Brussels, Belgium – The Counter Balance campaign today called for a winding-up of so-called development lending activities at the European Investment Bank (EIB), as the European NGO coalition issued a report detailing exactly why people living in poverty are failing to receive the benefit of billions of euros loaned each year by the EIB outside the European Union.

Download the report here

[Events] Launch of new Counter Balance report

22 February 2010

PRESS CONFERENCE INVITATION

Launch of new Counter Balance report

Corporate welfare and development deceptions
Why the European Investment Bank is failing to deliver outside the EU

When: 1.30 – 3.00 pm, February 25, 2010
Where: The Passage room (Ground floor), International Press Centre, Résidence Palace , Rue de la Loi 155, Brussels

**Sandwiches and refreshments will be provided in the IPC from 1.00pm**

[Press releases] Ethiopia’s newest dam suffers tunnel collapse days after inauguration

5 February 2010

Rome, Italy -- A critical water-passage tunnel in the newly inaugurated Gilgel Gibe 2 hydropower project in Ethiopia reportedly collapsed this week.

With a price tag of EUR 374 million and a capacity of 420 megawatts, Gilgel Gibe 2 is currently Ethiopia’s biggest power plant. The project channels the water discharged from the Gilgel Gibe 1 Dam through a long tunnel and a steep drop directly to the valley of the Omo River.

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[Policy Documents] Do we need another multilateral development bank controlled by Europe?

1 February 2010

Eurodad and Counter Balance submission to the Wise Persons Panel

Civil society organisations have engaged with the Wise Persons Panel in the past few months. On 28th January Eurodad and Counter Balance sent a submission to the Panel, which is currently finalising its recommendations for the European Council and the Parliament.

Download position paper here

[Events] Desperately Seeking ... Poverty Eradication, Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development! November 18-19 Conference Conclusions

28 December 2009

Why major reforms are needed in the new EIB external lending mandate.

“Major structural reforms needed,” concludes civil society after Counter Balance's 2-day November conference in Brussels on the European Investment Bank and its role in development.

Civil society was invited to the European Parliament on November 19, 2009, to present its findings and demands to host MEPs: Gabi Zimmer (GUE-NGL), Sven Giegold (Greens–EFA) and Thijs Berman (S&D). Civil society’s input was warmly welcomed by the MEPs as an invaluable source of information to support the necessary changes to the EIB's external lending mandate due to be debated at the parliament in 2010.

[Reports] RDC Grand Inga Dam is Conrad’s Nightmare - The World’s Biggest Dam and Development’s Heart of Darkness

27 November 2009

"Under the guise of bringing power to poor Africans, development banks are looking to put tens of billions of public money into a flight of fantasy that would only benefit huge Western multinationals and quite possibly feed African energy into European households," said Anders Lustgarten, Counter Balance /Bretton Woods Project (UK), which scrutinises the World Bank and IMF.

This is the story of what may be the world’s largest dam, an $80 billion, 40,000 megawatt (MW) megalith in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called Grand Inga, and the oddities that surround it: not least the 6,000km long electrical transmission line that would be built through the tropical rainforest, across the Sahara Desert and Darfur, through Egypt and the Mediterranean to bring the electricity to its destination—not poor Africans, but wealthy European consumers.
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