On Thursday 17 July, the European Commission decided to refer Hungary to the Court of Justice of the European Union for undermining the EU’s position on investor-state arbitration within the EU under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and contradicting the case law of the Court of Justice (see EUROPE 12782/13). In June 2024, 26 Member States signed a declaration on the legal consequences of the Court’s ‘Komstroy’ judgment, reaffirming that the ECT arbitration clause did not apply and had never applied in the EU to disputes between a Member State and an investor from an EU country. According to Hungary, the ‘Komstroy’ judgment only applied to future arbitration proceedings, once the ECT had been amended (see EUROPE 13537/25). (MB)