FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Dec 23, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The president of the European
Investment Bank, the EU’s lending arm, has sharply criticised industrial
companies for reacting too slowly to climate change, saying some bosses had
been “asleep at the wheel”.
In an interview to appear in German newspaper group RND on Monday, EIB
chief Werner Hoyer said he understood concerns over job losses in traditional
industries.
“But there are some business executives who should ask themselves if they
haven’t been asleep at the wheel,” he said, warning that change was
inevitable in the fight against global warming.
He singled out automakers for taking too long to make the switch from the
polluting internal combustion engine to cleaner electric cars.
It was “crystal clear 15 or even 20 years ago” that this transition would
have “an enormous impact on car suppliers especially”, said Hoyer.
“But instead of responding, many just sat back and waited.”
The comments come as Hoyer’s native Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is
experiencing a steep manufacturing slump driven by trade tensions, weak
global growth and Brexit uncertainty.
Germany’s crucial car industry has been especially hard hit by the
downturn, which comes as automakers are already weighed down by the huge
investments needed to shift to the cleaner, smarter cars of tomorrow.
Major companies like Volkswagen, Daimler and car supplier Continental have
announced tens of thousands of job cuts for the coming years.
Hoyer likened the sector’s pain to that felt by coal miners in Germany’s
industrial heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia in past decades as mines were
shuttered one by one.
“We need to chart a new course,” Hoyer said. “Nobody goes from being a
coal miner to running a digital start-up overnight.”
But the transition to a carbon neutral economy can be successful “if the
will is there”.
The Luxembourg-based EIB last month announced it would stop funding fossil
fuel projects from 2022 after new European Commission chief Ursula von der
Leyen called for the lender to turn into a “climate bank”.
The world’s largest international public bank also plans to mobilise one
trillion euros in sustainable investments over the next decade to help the
bloc become carbon neutral by 2050, in line with von der Leyen’s ambitious
“Green Deal”.