Leaving ECT, which protects fossil fuel investors from policy adjustments that may threaten their profits, is “consistent” with the Paris climate agreement, Macron said.
France is the newest country to withdraw from the debatable Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which protects fossil fuel investors from policy adjustments that may threaten their profits.
Speaking after an EU summit in Brussels on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “France has to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty. “Leaving ECT was “consistent” with the Paris climate agreement, he added.
Macron follows a recent vote in the Polish parliament to abandon the 52-nation treaty and announcements across Spain and the Netherlands that they, too, must leave the regime.
Earlier on Friday, Macron’s best friend in Brussels, French MEP Pascale Canfin, said: “We want to get out of the Energy Charter Treaty because we end up being sued by multinational corporations through personal tribunals that prevent us from wearing down our climate policies. “. “
The European Commission has proposed a “modernization” of the agreement, which would end the mandate of secret investor-state treaty tribunals among EU members. The plan is expected to be discussed at an assembly in Mongolia next month.
A French government official said Paris would try to block the allocation of modernization within the EU or at the assembly in Mongolia. “But whatever happens, France is leaving,” the official said.
While France “is willing to coordinate a withdrawal with others, we do not see that there is a critical mass in a position to interact with this in the EU bloc as a whole,” the official added.
The French withdrawal will take about a year to complete and, in the meantime, the discussion in Paris will most likely shift to tactics to neutralize or reduce the duration of a “sunset clause” in the ECT allowing retrospective prosecutions. Progress on this factor is considered imaginable through resources close to the ongoing legal negotiations over the factor.
The Energy Charter Treaty was launched in 1994 to protect Western electricity corporations operating in the countries of the former Soviet Union. It allows investors to sue governments that adopt policies that may jeopardize their expected monetary returns.
However, critics have estimated that the final charge of compensating fossil fuel corporations may be more than a trillion dollars.
In August, British oil company Rockhopper won a £210 million accolade for Italy’s ban on offshore drilling. Italy also withdrew from the treaty.