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environmental matter. Moreover, the EIB immediately relegates the level of debate to
the realm of possible specific procedural shortcomings, only admitting that “the
complaint reflects a disagreement on the judgments that have been made in the
assessment of certain environmental aspects, and on the way in which these have been
weighed against other aspects of the project,” as the body of the letter itself explains it.
At question, then, are no longer the rationales for the investment itself, which have now
been reincarnated as objective environmental needs, but only the technical expertise with
which it was administered. Even the blame for eventual procedural flaws is put on the
Hungarian government as the project promoter. Environmental and citizen advocacy
groups thus rightfully point to a continued discrepancy between an EU-advocated
rhetoric of highly integrated, transparent, all-inclusive, “reflexive” decision-making on
one hand, and a continued reality of a firmly un-self-critical EIB on the other hand, i.e. an
EU house bank which provides infrastructure financing under comparatively nontransparent,
inconsistent decision-making rationales.
9.5 Risk-rational Concerns: Is Brussels Co-financing Urban Sprawl in Budapest?
Beyond the more locally substantive and procedurally focused legal action against
the EIB, international environmental groups have since increasingly begun to question
EU funding for ring roads in general, and those in connection with TEN network
completion in particular. The current NGO viewpoint in this regard was best summarized
by Jim Barnes of Friends of the Earth Europe (2001:6) in a speech at the Trans-European
Transport Networks Conference organized by the EIB in Strasbourg. The argument is
multi-dimensional and worth quoting at length: