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FRIENDS OF THE EARTH CHALLENGES EU
ENVIRONMENT MINISTERS TO SUPPORT
GLOBAL RULES FOR BIG BUSINESS
LUXEMBOURG: With less than two months left until the Earth Summit, Friends of the Earth today warned EU
Environment Ministers to take urgent action to avoid the meeting being seen as a backward step for the environment,
and becoming dubbed "Rio-Minus-10". The world’s largest grassroots environment network delivered their demands to
EU Environment Ministers meeting in Luxembourg, calling on them to support legally binding rules for big business.
Friends of the Earth has made an international convention to stop multinational companies from causing environmental
and social damage one of their chief international campaigning priorities.
The Earth Summit, otherwise known as the World Summit on Sustainable Development, will take place in
Johannesburg, South Africa, at the end of August. FOE is calling on the Ministers to support rules to make corporations
fully accountable to the communities they affect and legally liable for any damage they cause.
As FOE campaigners presented their demands (click
here to see the demands) to the environmental minister of Luxembourg this morning, they were
accompanied by a giant inflatable businessman. The 20ft high fat businessman, clutching money and smoking a cigar,
represented powerful and greedy corporations.
Dr Martin Rocholl, Director of FOE Europe, said "The EU cannot be serious about achieving sustainable development if
it is not prepared to properly regulate big business to minimise its destructive impacts. Multinational corporations have
massively increased their power and profits in the ten years since the Rio Earth Summit, often at the expense the poor
and the global environment. Failure to control the actions of big business is the black hole in the Earth Summit process.
The EU Environment Ministers must make a decision. Do they represent the interests of the people or do they represent
the accountants of the corporate giants?"
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Frederic Thoma: +32 486 401895
Craig Bennett: +44 7747 123565
Ed Matthew: +44 7810 558 249
More information on the Johannesburg Earth Summit is available at: http//www.johannesburgsummit.org/
NOTES TO EDITOR:
- Five hundred companies now control almost two-thirds of world trade
- If listed in an economic league table alongside countries, more than half of the top 100 world economies are
multinational corporations
- The world’s five largest companies together generate annual sales greater than the combined incomes of the forty-six
poorest countries in the world
- Two-thirds of the world’s population now survive on less than two US dollars a day
- The gap is growing between the global rich and the global poor
- Half of the world’s forests have now been completely destroyed
- Half of the world’s rivers are seriously depleted and polluted.
- Over a third of the world’ fish stocks are either depleted or over-exploited.
Friends of the Earth Europe use Corporate Giant to call for rules for
Big Business, Brussels, 24th of June, Place du Luxembourg. |
More photos of the action with the Corporate Giant in
Brussels and Luxembourg
www.foeeurope.org/events/giant.htm
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