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G8 calls for full implementation of the EITI

G8 leaders stated that they would continue to support transparency through full implementation of the EITI, in the final declaration from the G8 summit in Deauville, France. Further, they called upon all countries to implement or support the EITI.

The G8 leaders' endorsement this year follows earlier statements of support from G20, including at their summit in Pittsburgh, and from earlier G8 summits.

In the G8 declaration, published 27 May, the leaders state:

We will continue to support transparency in other areas including through the full implementation of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), which we all support, We call on all countries, notably resource-rich countries, and extractive companies to join or support this initiative. We also welcome the complementary efforts to increase revenue transparency, and commit to setting in place transparency laws and regulations or to promoting voluntary standards that require or encourage oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to governments.

Also on 27 May, the leaders of G8 and Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa, and the African Union Commission, published the G8/Africa Joint Declaration where they state:

We will all continue to support transparency in other areas including through the full implementation of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). We call on all countries, notably resource-rich countries, and extractive companies to join or support this initiative. We also welcome the complementary efforts to increase revenue transparency, and commit to setting in place transparency laws and regulations or to promoting voluntary standards that require or encourage oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to governments. 

Further, José Barroso, President of the European Commission, wrote the following in a comment in Liberation last week (translated):

Good governance can consolidate the progress made in these two areas. Natural resources must be used to create stability and not to finance corruption. Those hundreds of billions of euros of revenue are far superior to any aid that could be granted. Therefore, we should call for improved transparency in the distribution of revenues in these countries. This would be achieved more easily if companies made publicly accountable for the amounts they pay to governments.

Because things have got to change, the European Union, alongside civil society and African leaders, supports the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) as a new international standard to promote revenue transparency and accountability in the extractive sector.

I want to go further by making these commitments binding in EU law. In October, the European Commission will present a legislative proposal for amending the Transparency Directive to include disclosure requirements for extractive industry revenues.

The EITI was last year also endorsed by all the regional development banksLa Francophonie and the Arab League. The EITI Endorsement sheet includes quotes from some of these supporters.