Paris, 23 Feb. France’s BNP Paribas will have to answer to the Court for its “financial support” for projects that contribute to climate change, as NGOs promoting legal action report today, seeking to go down in history as the “first climate trial in the world”. against a commercial bank”.
The organizations Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire À Tous and Oxfam France accuse BNP Paribas of ignoring its responsibility for the climate crisis and of being “the world’s leading financier of the eight major European and North American oil and gas companies”. .
The complaint is based on a 2017 French law on “the duty of vigilance of multinationals”, which obliges large French companies to take measures to identify and prevent serious risks of human rights violations, including damage to the environment. .
According to these NGOs, the French bank ignored the previous demands of the three associations to put an end to their “climate-killing” activities (those which consist of financing fossil fuels), which is why, after the deadline provided for by law has passed without a response (three months), complainants have the right to take legal action.
“It’s official: BNP Paribas will have to answer to justice for its responsibility in the climate crisis. The three associations of ‘L’Affaire BNP’ have filed a complaint against the most polluting bank in France for breach of the law on duty due diligence of multinationals”, they detailed in a press release.
BNP Paribas has been denounced before the Paris Court of Justice, which will be responsible for “setting a timetable for the next stages of the procedure”.
The lawyers of the NGO hope that the magistrates will rely on the guiding principles of the UN and the OECD which “define the specific measures of supervision for the activities supported by the banks, their financing and their investments, and can go as far as the cessation of the activity at the origin of the damage”. “.
“BNP Paribas continues to issue blank checks to the largest fossil energy companies without transition conditions (…) Through this summons, we strongly reiterate that our associations are determined to obtain a binding decision from the judge”, said Alexandre in Poidatz, Oxfam’s Climate Legal Advocacy Manager.
This action is in line with the pioneering affair which opposed the Netherlands to the Urgenda Foundation. It accused the Dutch state of failing to meet a minimum target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which put citizens’ rights at risk.
A similar precedent was set in France with the climate justice campaign “L’Affaire du siècle”, which led to the French state being ordered by a court to repair the damage of its climate inaction.
Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire À Tous and Oxfam France have been promoting the “BNP Paribas affair” campaign since 2022, which denounces the involvement of this bank in projects that are harmful to the environment and contrary to the objective of limiting global climate warming. EFE
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