The Spanish Ministers for Ecological Transition, Foreign Affairs and Industry—Teresa Ribera, Arancha González Laya and Reyes Maroto Illera, respectively, sent a letter to the European Commission on Tuesday, 9 February, calling on the European Union to be more ambitious in modernising the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).
“Spain will keep on working with all Member States and the Commission in order to achieve a genuinely and successfully modernised ECT, but a stronger, more robust and more determined position on this issue is essential”, the three Ministers write.
Stressing that the negotiations for the modernisation of the ECT, which began in July 2020, have led to “no preliminary outcomes” as of yet, the three Spanish Ministers are “extremely concerned” due to the spectre that the treaty may not be brought into line with the Paris Agreement and the objectives of the European Green Deal.
Indeed, “many contracting parties seem not to share European ambitions in the field of climate change mitigation, sustainable development and energy transition”, says Madrid. However, any revision of the ECT requires the unanimous agreement of all 54 contracting parties.
These concerns are shared in particular by France and Luxembourg, which had also written to the Commission recently (see EUROPE 12655/10, 12637/11).
Reviewing the ISDS mechanism
In their letter, the Ministers call in particular for “structural reform” of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS), to be included in the treaty.
According to them, it is necessary that the modernisation of the ECT lead to a clear exclusion of intra-EU arbitration, in order to defend “integrity and primacy of the EU legal system and its application in all Member States”.
Withdrawal from the ECT
Finally, like France, Spain believes that the EU and its Member States should consider withdrawing from the ECT “in the most favourable conditions” to European interests, if the modernisation process “fails within the planned schedule”.
For his part, the Luxembourg Minister for Energy and Town and Country Planning, Claude Turmes, had expressed serious reservations about such an option, thus more in line with the Commission’s position on this point (see EUROPE 12655/10, 12615/35).
While the fourth round of negotiations between the contracting parties for the modernisation of the ECT will take place from 2 to 5 March, the EU has until Monday 15 February inclusive to send its negotiating position to the secretariat of the ECT.
At the time of going to press, this issue was apparently the subject of last-minute discussions between the Council of the EU and the Commission, after the latter put a new proposal on the table last Friday (see EUROPE 12657/1).
See the Spanish letter: https://bit.ly/2LT2vGv (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)