Meeting in Strasbourg for a plenary session of the European Parliament, MEPs adopted on Thursday 24 November a resolution calling on the European Commission to immediately initiate the process of a coordinated exit of the European Union from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), in force since 1998.
According to Parliament, this international agreement to protect investments in the energy sector is now “an outdated instrument, which no longer serves the interests of the European Union”.
The agreement in principle reached at the end of the negotiations on the modernisation of the ECT last June (see EUROPE 12979/10) “is not aligned with the Paris Agreement, the European Climate Law or the objectives of the European Green Deal”, also points out the resolution, previously detailed in our articles (see EUROPE 13069/6). The contracting parties to the ECT have not yet adopted this agreement. The vote had been postponed due to the lack of a common position of the EU Council (see EUROPE 13067/8).
The EPP and ECR Groups, which were in favour of modernising the ECT, largely voted against the text - adopted by 303 votes in favour, 209 against and 63 abstentions - as did the entire ID Group.
To date, seven Member States (Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Slovenia, Germany and Luxembourg) have announced their decision to leave the ECT. Italy, on the other hand, officially left the treaty in 2016.
See the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/497
MEPs’ votes (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/493 (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)