In an Opinion delivered on Thursday 16 June, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that a request by Belgium for an Opinion on the compatibility of the draft modernised ‘Energy Charter Treaty’ (ECT) with the EU Treaties was premature and therefore inadmissible (Opinion 1/20).
“In its opinion, the Court does not have sufficient information on the actual content of the envisaged draft modernised ECT and that, therefore, the present request for an Opinion, on account of its premature nature, must be regarded as inadmissible”, the CJEU press release states.
Belgium submitted its request for an Opinion to the Court on 2 December 2020. However, the process of modernising the ECT, launched in 2018, is still ongoing (after 14 rounds of negotiations, the parties hope to reach an agreement on the modernisation of the Treaty on 24 June).
The Belgian request concerned in particular the applicability of the dispute settlement mechanism provided for in the draft ECT to disputes between an investor from one EU Member State and another Member State.
In a judgment delivered on 2 September 2021, the Court concluded that the current ECT arbitration mechanism (enshrined in Article 26 of the Treaty) is not applicable to disputes between an investor from one EU Member State and another Member State (Case C-741/19 - see EUROPE 12782/13).
However, with regard to the Belgian request, it considers that it “does not have sufficient information on the content and, more particularly, on the scope of the provision on the dispute settlement mechanism, as it will appear in the modernised ECT”.
See the Court’s Opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/25j (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)