* 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 8 June 2010, Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale lodged a complaint with the EIB Complaints Mechanism (EIB-CM) whereby the lack of transparency by the EIB in the Gibe III Hydropower Plant project was alleged. In their view, the EIB would have – by means of Technical Assistance financed in the pre-appraisal stage – carried out a “shadow appraisal” which did not allow any stakeholders’ engagement.
EIB-CM Action
The inquiry of the EIB-CM, besides exploring the extensive correspondence between the parties on the matter, focused on the assessment of the constraints of confidentiality of the claimed information as well as the compliance of the stakeholders’ engagement performed by the EIB competent services with the EIB standards and practices.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The EIB-CM concluded that the EIB was not carrying out a “shadow” appraisal, but decided to engage additional and extraordinary financial resources as Technical Assistance to improve the quality of the project impact assessments at a preliminary stage, given the global scrutiny of the project as well as the lessons learnt in the previous hydropower plant projects financed in Ethiopia. Due to this additional engagement materialising in an Independent Review of the ESIA carried out by the promoter and given the great complexity of the issues affecting the project under consideration, the EIB-CM considered that the EIB operational services should have accepted the complainant’s request for an additional meeting after the EIB Management Committee had formally authorised the provision of financial assistance to the promoter and recommended that, when the activity performed by the EIB services during the pre-appraisal of a proposed operation exceeds the preliminary basic screening to be carried out during this phase of the project cycle (as in case of financial support to the assessment of the project provided within the framework of Technical Assistance), the EIB shall modulate its stakeholders’ engagement taking into consideration the financial and human resources deployed in the additional assessment with a view to complying with its standards and practices.
As regards the requests for access to project-related information, the EIB CM recommended that – in the absence of arguments for the confidentiality of the Terms of Reference for the EFTA study - the EIB competent services should reconsider the possibility of the partial (if not total) disclosure of such a document.