Open letter on the Energy Charter Treaty

Prioritize climate protection and public policy space!

(9.12.2019) As the Energy Charter Conference takes place in Brussels this week (10./11. December 2019), more than 270 civil society groups (among them WIDE) call on decision-makers to scrap the Energy Charter Treaty as long it continues to protect fossil fuels and includes the ISDS parallel justice system for corporations.

The civil society organisations – environmental, climate, consumer, development, trade related civil society groups, as well as trade unions – express in an open letter to European ministers, the EU Commission and Parliaments that the Energy Charter Treaty is incompatible with the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, just transition policies developed together with workers and their unions, and other necessary public policy measures.

The Energy Charter Treaty has been – and will increasingly be – used by fossil fuel and nuclear energy companies to challenge government decisions to phase out such energy sources. It can also be an obstacle to prioritising investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency, to bringing energy production under public control, and to taking measures to end energy poverty. The Energy Charter Treaty in its current form is outdated and a threat to the public interest.

The civil society organisations demand from the EU politicians to:

• Include as a condition for entering negotiations to modernise the Energy Charter Treaty the removal of provisions that protect fossil fuels;
• Request the removal of investor-state dispute settlement provisions from the agreement;
• Withdraw from or jointly terminate the Energy Charter Treaty, if the modernisation process fails to promptly make the agreement climate- and environment-proof by removing investor-state dispute settlement and protections for fossil fuels;
• Immediately put a brake on the process to expand the Energy Charter Treaty geographically to ever new states and to not allow any treaty accessions as long as the Energy Charter Treaty is in its current state.

Read: Open letter