Speaking in the French National Assembly on Wednesday 16 November, the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said that France would abstain from the vote in the Council of the European Union to define the EU’s position on the modernisation of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).
In force since 1998, this international treaty for the protection of investments in the energy sector has been revised to bring it more in line with new climate and energy realities. This modernisation process resulted last June in a Memorandum of Understanding between the contracting parties to the ECT, including the EU, which was considered insufficient by some Member States (see EUROPE 12979/10).
Several of them (Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Slovenia and Germany) have announced their decision to leave the treaty in recent weeks (see EUROPE 13062/14).
Together, these countries could form a blocking minority, preventing the EU Council from adopting a position for the next meeting of the ECT contracting parties to adopt the agreement in principle on 22-23 November. In addition to France, Belgium and Germany also said they would abstain, with the Dutch Parliament calling on its government to do the same.
While a discussion on the subject between the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) was supposed to lead to a common position on Wednesday 16 November, the subject was finally withdrawn from the agenda of their meeting, a sign of the divisions within the EU Council.
According to the Commission, the ambassadors will vote this Friday, but the item was still not on the agenda of the Coreper meeting at the time of going to press.
“The idea is to discuss the item again on Friday during Coreper in order to reach a qualified majority and put it as an A item (adoption without debate) at the meeting of EU agriculture and fisheries ministers on Monday 21 November”, a source told EUROPE. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)