From words to deeds. According to our information, confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France has just notified its withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty (TCE), this international agreement, in force since 1998, which protects investors from changes in energy policy. States. President Emmanuel Macron announced on October 21 his intention to do so, arguing that it would be “in line with the Paris agreement”, but neither the Elysée nor the government had communicated on the subject since. This exit will be effective, as provided for in the text, one year after its notification, i.e. on 1er January 2024.
France is the second country, among the fifty-three signatories of the ECT – the European Union (EU) and its Member States, but also Japan, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan – to take a such decision. It joins Italy, which left in 2016. In November, other EU member states, such as Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Spain, had signaled their decision to do the same. We are now waiting for them to act.
“Survival Clause”
The TCE, imagined after the collapse of the Soviet empire and the Gulf War, aimed to secure the energy supply of the Old Continent. It allows investors in this sector to request, before a private arbitration tribunal, compensation from a State which, by reorienting its policy, would thus affect the profitability of their investments. Even if a country decides to withdraw, it remains subject to its obligations for twenty years – this is the “survival clause”. In theory, therefore, France will not be able to abstain from it before 2044.
Today, it constitutes a brake on the ambitions of countries that want to fight against global warming and is not compatible with the rate of decarbonization of the economy required by the Paris agreement, as judged, in France, the High Council for the Climate on October 19. Proponents of the TCE argue that it also concerns the renewables sector. Its detractors retort that its main consequence is to alter the sovereignty of the signatory countries of the ECT in terms of energy policy.
If the largest countries were to agree to leave the ECT together and free themselves from their respective obligations, the treaty would be reduced to its minimum.
In this context, the Commission, which is negotiating on behalf of the Twenty-Seven, had campaigned for a modernization of the treaty, rather than for a coordinated exit, and gave its agreement in principle, on June 24, to a reform project that it had negotiated at length with the other States participating in the ECT. In the process, it was expected that the signatories of the text would formally vote on November 22 – a ballot for which unanimity is required. But the Twenty-Seven were divided, and several countries – France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany – had inflicted a snub on the Community executive, refusing to give it the necessary mandate. At the last moment, the vote had therefore been postponed, and a new meeting should take place by April 2023.
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