The Complainant has waived the right to confidentiality. However, the Complainant requested that his/her name remains anonymous.
* Admissibility date reflects the date the case was officially registered. All other dates pertain to the date in which a stage was completed.
Case Description
Complaint
On 4 April 2014, the EIB Complaints Mechanism (EIB-CM) received a complaint concerning the JEREMIE initiative in Cyprus. The complainant alleged unnecessary delay in the handling of his/her application for funding to Bank of Cyprus (BoC) (3 months from the submission of his/her application). The complainant concluded i) that he/she missed the opportunity to execute contracts in May due to the negligent conduct of BoC towards him/her and ii) that if he/she had been granted the loan in January as he/she was promised, the production would be fully operational today. The complainant noted that the funding initiative at stake is useless unless it is applied to SMEs and expressed his/her interest in receiving a response to his/her complaint about being ridiculed by BoC, while EIF funds remain undisposed of.
EIB-CM Action
The EIB-CM has performed an assessment of the complaint.
Conclusions
On 23 September 2014, the EIB-CM contacted the complainant to inform him/her that while reviewing his/her correspondence it had noted that the correspondence was not directly addressed to the EIB Complaints Mechanism or one of the other recipients indicated in the EIB-CM Principles, Terms of Reference and Rules of Procedure (EIB CMPTR). In addition to that, the EIB-CM explained its mandate and, in particular, the fact that it handles complaints about alleged maladministration by the EIB Group and that, pursuant to article 2.3 of Title IV of the EIB CMPTR, the EIB-CM is not competent to investigate complaints concerning national, regional or local authorities, and a fortiori a public limited company as the Bank of Cyprus.