LONDON'S Green MEP Jean Lambert will hand a symbolic pipeline covered in thousands of letters objecting to a proposed oil link spanning Turkey to officials at the Department for International Development on Monday (July 14).
Mrs Lambert, a member of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, will present the 'pipeline' and letters alongside campaigners from Friends of the Earth.
The London Euro-MP, who brought the pipeline to the attention of the European Commission last month, said: "The planned pipeline threatens to undermine democracy, human rights and the protection of Turkey's Kurdish minority.
Following her earlier objection, the European Commission warned last week that Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union could be undermined by its agreement to allow a consortium led by BP to construct the 1,760km link between Azerbaijan and the Mediterranean.
The proposed pipeline has provoked anger from environmental and human rights organisations who fear it will destroy vast tracts of Turkish countryside and lead to increased repression against Kurds and other minorities living along the route.
The BP-led consortium that hopes to build the pipeline has already signed an agreement with the Turkish Government which will allow them to demand protection from security forces - and includes a commitment that Turkey will introduce no new laws for environmental or social reasons that could undermine the economic success of the project.
"By insisting on an agreement not to enact any new laws designed to protect the environment, the consortium has effectively undermined the freedom of a supposedly democratic sovereign state, which will no longer be able to respond to the wishes of the citizens that elected it," said Mrs Lambert.
The European Commission admitted this week that any negative effects of the pipeline - or the agreement on new laws and security - would have a direct bearing on Turkey's goal of joining the EU.
Mrs Lambert said: "The oil companies are interfering in the freedom of action of a sovereign state and this is likely to result in Turkey failing to meet EU standards on human rights, democracy and environmental protection," she said.
"Turkey's desire to join the EU, and its awareness that the EU is watching, will provide some safeguards. Perhaps more worrying is that no-one's there to hold Azerbaijan, or BP and the other oil companies involved, to account.
"Can it be that the only brake on corporate attempts to undermine democracy and human rights in pursuit of profit is BP's shareholders?"
ENDS
For more
information please contact Ben Duncan on 020 7407 6280, 07973 823358 or at press@greenmeps.org.uk