Brussels, 21/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 20 April, on the sidelines of an official visit to Finland, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev floated proposals for a new world energy charter to replace the 1991 Energy Charter Treaty which Russia continues to refuse to ratify. The proposed new charter, to cover energy disputes between countries and thus reinforce energy security, has been sent to the G20, the EU and the countries of the former USSR. At a press conference in Helsinki with his Finnish counterpart Tarja Halonen, Medvedev said he wanted to begin talks with the EU “as soon as possible”, on the paper. He said he hoped for constructive dialogue.
Preceded by a political statement in 1991, the European Energy Charter, in which the states of the former USSR and the former Soviet bloc, on the one hand, and the countries of Western Europe, on the other, expressed their desire to cooperate more closely in the area of energy, is an inter-governmental treaty signed in Lisbon in 1994. It came into effect in 1998. The Energy Charter Treaty, which has been signed by 51 countries since 1994, including the EU member states and applicant countries, the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (of which Russia and Belarus have not yet ratified the treaty, although they are applying it provisionally), Japan and Switzerland, seeks to improve the security of energy supplies and to optimise energy production, transport and distribution. It covers trade and transit, investment, energy efficiency and the environment. Principally, the Energy Charter Treaty requires each party to facilitate transit of energy material and products without distinction as to their origin or destination and forbids any energy interruption or reduction in the event of any dispute on transit arrangements.
“We have not ratified these documents and do not consider ourselves bound by them,” Medvedev said again on Monday. According to his principal economic adviser Arkadi Dvorkovich, Moscow is putting on the table a document that “offers a completely new legal basis for future cooperation”. “Many principles which operate within the EU are irrelevant to the energy chapter. This document (the current Energy Charter Treaty: Ed.) no longer corresponds to today's realities,” he said. This is mainly because it does not include one of the world's biggest players, the United States. The new pact proposed by Moscow seeks to cover oil, gas, nuclear fuel, coal and electricity and to include China, the United States and India. (E.H./transl.rt)