FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Climate activists from Greenpeace landed a paraglider on top of the European Central Bank’s press centre on Wednesday and hung a banner accusing the bank of funding polluters.
After flying over the Main river in Frankfurt, the two activists landed at the low-rise ECB complex and unfurled a banner that demanded the ECB “stop funding climate killers”.
An ECB spokesperson confirmed the breach and said that police had been called. He added that the bank was conducting a review of its strategy and this process included an in-depth analysis of how to respond to the climate crisis.
The Greenpeace protest followed a think tank report which argued that the ECB’s lending rules, particularly its collateral requirements, favoured carbon intensive industries and perpetuated a market failure to properly price polluting assets.
The ECB has long been criticised for not taking long term climate risk into account when it buys bonds and gives credit.
While policymakers, including ECB President Christine Lagarde, have acknowledged that markets are not appropriately pricing climate risk, the bank has yet to change course, awaiting the results of its review, now due around September.
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
