MEPs on the Committees on International Trade (INTA) and Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) will vote on Tuesday 9 April, under the European Parliament’s consent procedure, on the European Commission’s proposal to withdraw the EU from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) (see EUROPE 13376/6).
The EU Council approved the proposal on 7 March (see EUROPE 13366/9). A parliamentary source told Agence Europe that the European Parliament recommendation validating the withdrawal should also meet with the approval of the two parliamentary committees. A vote at the plenary session in Strasbourg will follow at the end of April.
Withdrawal
Eleven EU Member States (Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Denmark, Ireland and Portugal) as well as the UK have already decided to withdraw from this multilateral trade and investment agreement, which came into force in 1998 and has been criticised for the protection it affords to investments in fossil fuels.
It is in fact the investment treaty most often used by multinational companies to sue governments that have implemented policies aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.
The co-rapporteurs Anna Cavazzini (Greens/EFA, German) and Marc Botenga (The Left, Belgian) welcome the Commission’s proposal, believing that it is not possible to remain a contracting party to the ECT. They call on the Commission to continue to promote a coordinated exit by all Member States “in order to limit the negative effects of the sunset clause and to effectively prevent intra-EU disputes”.
This clause, triggered by a unilateral withdrawal from the ECT, extends the protection of existing investments by 20 years.
The co-rapporteurs also call on the Commission to find an agreement with the Member States which would make it possible to codify the interpretation according to which the ECT does not apply and is not intended to apply to disputes between a Member State and an investor from another Member State who has made an investment in the first Member State.
Finally, they are asking it to propose a second agreement enabling the contracting parties to the ECT who are not members of the EU and wish to withdraw from the treaty to neutralise the sunset clause on a reciprocal basis.
Modernisation
The co-rapporteurs also point out that a process to modernise the treaty was initiated in November 2018 to bring it into line with the principles of the Paris Climate Agreement, but that the modernisation text failed to convince a qualified majority of Member States.
However, at the beginning of March, the Commission proposed that the Member States approve the agreement to modernise the treaty before the Union fully withdrew from it (see EUROPE 13363/4).
Under the proposal, Member States wishing to remain contracting parties to the treaty once the EU has withdrawn can only do so if they are authorised to by the Union. At present, this specific provision is not satisfactory to the Member States, who have not retained it in a provisional EU Council document.
See the Parliament’s draft report: https://aeur.eu/f/bmi (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)