When will Coface and Société Générale follow BNP & HypoVereinsbank and withdraw from Kaliningrad nuclear plant?

(Friends of the Earth France, Paris, 26 April 2013) Following in the footsteps of BNP Paribas, the German HypoVereinsbank recently announced that it will not finance the Kaliningrad nuclear power plant in Russia. Today, to mark the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Friends of the Earth France launches the mobilization against this project in France with an online petition (1), supported by Greenpeace, the Nuclear Exit (“Sortir du nucléaire”) network, ATTAC and BankTrack, demanding that Coface and Société Générale follow their example immediately. In addition, 94 organisations from 22 countries have signed an open letter (2) in support of this goal, while the Russian NGO Ecodefense, currently undergoing an inspection by the Russian authorities, demonstrates in front of the offices of Société Générale’s subsidiary in Kaliningrad (3).