* 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
On 7 November 2008, a complaint was filed against the EIB for failing to hold a public consultation on the review of its Transport Lending Policy and through that fact to fail to comply with EC Regulation1367/2006 as well as the Aarhus Convention and to fail to provide adequate motivation for the rejection of the request to launch such a public consultation by the competent services of the EIB.
The EIB Complaints Mechanism (EIB-CM) conducted an enquiry, following a preliminary analysis, including inter-services consultation on the issue raised. From its enquiry into the complaint and a review of the relevant legal aspects, it follows that for the EIB, an EU institution with a role limited to providing loans and guarantees for the benefit of the wider Community objectives and not as an EU institution charged with public administrative functions in the environmental field, there is no formal obligation to engage in a public participation process for its specific lending policy in, e.g., the transport sector.
However, the fact that such EIB specific lending policies fall under the concept of financial plans and programmes in the meaning of the Aarhus convention (the ground for the exclusion of such formal obligation) would not prevent the EIB, would it wish to, to consult the public during the preparation of its lending policy papers.
Moreover, the EIB’s renewed transport lending policy sets guiding principles for individual lending operations in that sector, that as such would be exempt from the applications of the provisions on public consultation. However, this new policy could be seen as a decision on the modalities of the implementation of an environmental action programme that will per se be implemented in a way that the EIB has to acknowledge in its sector policies.
As regards the alleged failure to comply with the Aarhus convention, the enquiry showed that the EIB is indirectly as well as by the environment in which it operates subject and or affected by the provisions of the Convention and, generally, the exclusions relevant to the EIB, as a banking institution and not charged with administrative functions, should be interpreted restrictively.
The above two arguments for engaging in a public consultation on its renewed transport lending policy despite not being obliged to do so, could usefully be acknowledged with the Aarhus convention as a guidance instrument on the specific procedures.
On the allegation that the EIB failed to adequately motivate the rejection for a public consultation procedure, it was found that, indeed, the motivation should have made reference to the fact that neither the EIB’s Guidelines on public consultation nor the Aarhus regulation foresee any consultation for sector lending policies.
Overall, the EIB-CM’s conclusion was that engaging in a public consultation on its lending policies will strengthen the image of the EIB in terms of Corporate Responsibility and, in fact, the EIB-CM recommends that the Bank formally adopts a policy of public consultations on renewing of its sector lending policies