> The Flemish Government has activated 75 million euros of the bank guarantee for Ineos anyway. However, it itself formulated the explicit condition that this could not be done as long as Ineos has not obtained a final environmental permit for Project One. That condition is written in black and white in a document from which Apache publishes an excerpt.
> Yesterday (24/8) in the Flemish Parliament’s Economy Committee, which had been convened early, mainly Thijs Verbeurgt (Vooruit) and Maurits Vande Reyde (Open Vld) asked questions about the partially activated bank guarantee. These were waved away by Flemish Minister of Economy Jo Brouns (CD&V) and Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon (N-VA) with the lecture that “definitively acquired” does not have to imply that all appeal possibilities against an environmental permit have been exhausted.
> However, the minutes of the Flemish guarantee fund Gigarant, which negotiated the guarantee for Ineos, explicitly state the opposite: a fully approved, final environmental permit means that there is no more possibility of appeal.
> The session of the Economy Committee was quite animated. Not least about the bundle of documents the committee members had received beforehand about the establishment of the guarantee arrangement between the Flemish Government and Ineos. Those documents turned out to be for the most part blacked out. As a result, they did not have access to all, often crucial, information.
> Especially opposition parties Groen, PVDA and Vooruit denounced the shocking lack of transparency and the preferential treatment of Ineos. They asked in different variations the question of how the Flemish Parliament can exercise its supervisory function when spending a guarantee of half a billion euros without being able to look at the documents.
> Minister Brouns presented the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that the Flemish Government has concluded with Ineos. That commitment would make it impossible for the Flemish Government to disclose potentially company-sensitive information in the documents.
> The choice caused committee members to wave a bundle of black-marked paper in frustration and repeatedly denounce the continuing lack of transparency in the dossier.
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> The Flemish Government has activated 75 million euros of the bank guarantee for Ineos anyway. However, it itself formulated the explicit condition that this could not be done as long as Ineos has not obtained a final environmental permit for Project One. That condition is written in black and white in a document from which Apache publishes an excerpt.
> Yesterday (24/8) in the Flemish Parliament’s Economy Committee, which had been convened early, mainly Thijs Verbeurgt (Vooruit) and Maurits Vande Reyde (Open Vld) asked questions about the partially activated bank guarantee. These were waved away by Flemish Minister of Economy Jo Brouns (CD&V) and Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon (N-VA) with the lecture that “definitively acquired” does not have to imply that all appeal possibilities against an environmental permit have been exhausted.
> However, the minutes of the Flemish guarantee fund Gigarant, which negotiated the guarantee for Ineos, explicitly state the opposite: a fully approved, final environmental permit means that there is no more possibility of appeal.
> The session of the Economy Committee was quite animated. Not least about the bundle of documents the committee members had received beforehand about the establishment of the guarantee arrangement between the Flemish Government and Ineos. Those documents turned out to be for the most part blacked out. As a result, they did not have access to all, often crucial, information.
> Especially opposition parties Groen, PVDA and Vooruit denounced the shocking lack of transparency and the preferential treatment of Ineos. They asked in different variations the question of how the Flemish Parliament can exercise its supervisory function when spending a guarantee of half a billion euros without being able to look at the documents.
> Minister Brouns presented the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that the Flemish Government has concluded with Ineos. That commitment would make it impossible for the Flemish Government to disclose potentially company-sensitive information in the documents.
> The choice caused committee members to wave a bundle of black-marked paper in frustration and repeatedly denounce the continuing lack of transparency in the dossier.
Translated with deepl.com