The S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA and The Left groups tabled a motion for a European Parliament resolution, on Wednesday 23 November, urging the European Commission to immediately start the process for a coordinated exit of the European Union from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), an international agreement aimed at protecting investments in the energy sector.
The draft resolution will be put to the vote by MEPs on Thursday, two days after the Energy Charter Conference where the contracting parties, including the EU (represented by the Commission), were expected to vote on the adoption of the agreement in principle on the modernisation of the treaty.
The originally scheduled voting session was eventually withdrawn from the Conference agenda, at the request of the Commission, following the failure of the Member States to agree on a common EU position (see EUROPE 13067/8).
Noting the absence of a qualified majority of Member States in favour of the agreement in principle, the Parliament’s motion for a resolution stresses that neither the EU nor its Member States can remain party to the current ECT “because of its incompatibility with EU law and EU policy”.
While seven Member States (Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Slovenia, Germany and Luxembourg) have recently announced their decision to withdraw from the Treaty, the draft text calls on the Commission to initiate a coordinated exit from the EU and invites the EU Council to support this proposal.
For the signatory groups, this is “the best option for the EU to achieve legal certainty and prevent the ECT from putting the EU’s climate and energy security ambitions further in jeopardy”.
These groups find the agreement in principle on the modernisation of the ECT (see EUROPE 12979/10) problematic in several respects.
In particular, the motion for a resolution criticises the fact that the pending text maintains the protection of existing fossil fuel investments for at least 10 years from the entry into force of the modernised ECT.
However, this period would only start to run from 15 August 2023, if the EU, the Member States and the other contracting parties were to agree to provisionally apply the agreement, or later, if one has to wait for the ratification of the modernised ECT by ¾ of the contracting parties. In the view of the signatory political groups, the protection of investments in fossil fuels could thus be extended for a period close to 20 years.
They also regret that the agreement retains an “outdated” Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism.
Recalling that the EU cannot ratify the modernised ECT without the final agreement of the Parliament, the motion for a resolution “takes the position that the Parliament will support the EU exit when requested to consent to it”.
According to our information, the outcome of Thursday’s vote remains uncertain, as the EPP is said to not support the motion for a resolution.
See the draft resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/47g (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)