Frankfurt (AFP)
Two Greenpeace activists landed on the roof of one of the European Central Bank's buildings in Frankfurt on Wednesday in an action to denounce the debt buybacks of companies hungry for fossil fuels.
Arriving by air using a motorized paraglider, the two activists landed on the roof of a building usually used for press conferences before deploying a banner, a spokeswoman for the AFP confirmed to AFP. BCE.
According to images published by Greenpeace on Twitter, the more than 10 meters long banner had the slogan "stop funding climate killers" on a yellow background.
The environmental NGO denounces in a report published on Wednesday the policy of private debt buybacks carried out by the ECB, including 300 billion euros of securities issued by more than 60 companies using fossil fuels, including Shell, Total, Eni, OMV and Repsol.
To support activity in the euro zone severely shaken by the Covid-19 pandemic, the ECB launched in 2020 a program of massive debt buybacks mainly public, but also private, which completed the "QE" program - for "quantitative easing" - launched in 2015 and aimed at injecting liquidity into the economy.
As it already did in October, Greenpeace calls on the ECB on Wednesday to support the transition to renewable energies and to align with the Paris climate agreement.
"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in this century" and the ECB "is helping the response as part of its mandate as a central bank, acting in concert with those responsible for climate policy, "said the spokesperson for the ECB.
Climate change is one of the subjects that the French Christine Lagarde wishes to include in the vast strategic review project of the ECB's mandate launched shortly after her arrival at the head of the institution at the end of 2019, and whose results, initially expected. at the end of 2020, were postponed to the second part of 2021 due to the pandemic.
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