The European Union and the other contracting parties to the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) reached an agreement in principle on Friday 24 June to modernise this international treaty to bring it more in line with today’s economic and energy reality, concluding a negotiation process that began in July 2020.
After completion of an editorial and legal review, the draft text will be communicated to the contracting parties by 22 August 2022, says the communication issued by the ECT Secretariat. They will have until November to decide whether to ratify the revised treaty.
The draft text would then be adopted by the Energy Charter Conference on 22 November 2022. Finally, the modernised ECT will enter into force 90 days after ratification by three quarters of the contracting parties.
NGOs have already criticised the agreement in principle as being at odds with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the ‘European Green Deal’. EUROPE will continue to follow this story.
See the agreement in principle: https://aeur.eu/f/2bs (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)