Post date: Feb 19, 2014 3:48:4 PM
EIB President Werner Hoyer says EU bank activities in Ukraine have been frozen after at least 26 people died in the worst violence since the former Soviet republic gained independence.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (REUTERS) - The European Investment Bank (EIB) said on Wednesday (February 19) it had frozen its activities in Ukraine after at least 26 people died in the worst violence since the former Soviet republic gained independence.
EIB President Werner Hoyer said the bank had put its activities on hold and would wait to see how the situation in Kiev developed."We have for the time being stopped our activities because it is necessary to wait for the economic and political developments in the country will be. And we align fully with the European External Action Service and the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union. You can be sure that also due to my personal background I'm very sensitive to these things and it is absolutely necessary that the European Union speaks with one voice and there the EU bank is part of the European voice," Hoyer told a news conference.
The bank's recent activities in Ukraine include the extension of a metro line, modernisation of air traffic control facilities and a credit line designed to finance small and medium-scale projects.
Finance contracts it signed with Ukraine between 2007 and 2013 totalled 2.149 billion euros ($2.96 billion).
The European Union, which controls the EIB, said earlier it was moving to impose sanctions on officials who ordered the use of force against Ukrainian protesters.
Hoyer said that there was a plan for exploring a couple of fields of investor activities that required trips to Ukraine that he cancelled on Tuesday night after learning about the violence.
"To be quite blunt we won't work until this bloody violence stops. This is the key thing, for the time being the situation is so cruel that it would be politically the wrong signal but also irresponsible vis-à-vis the people we asked to do the job to be active in business in Ukraine and I think that it will be completely the wrong signal to appear as being the ones who do business as usual in Ukrainewhile the people on the streets of Kiev, by whom and why ever, are been slaughtered," Hoyer said after presenting the bank's 2013 results to media in Brussels.
Hoyer said he will now wait for an official response from an extraordinary meeting of the European Union's foreign ministers due on Thursday before deciding on further actions.