On Friday, Germany announced it was withdrawing from the Energy Charter Treaty, joining France and the Netherlands in saying it was “inconsistent with the Paris Climate Agreement to combat global warming.”
Franziska Brantner, State Secretary of the German Economy Ministry, explained her country’s decision by saying: “We are constantly aligning our trade policy with climate protection and withdrawing from the Energy Pact accordingly.”
“This is also an important signal for the UN Climate Change Conference,” she added.
Notably, the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty began as a way to protect energy investment, especially in Central Asia and Eastern Europe in the former Soviet countries. One of its key elements is allowing energy companies to sue governments for energy policy changes that could harm their investments, exposing countries to billions in compensation claims, and as Europe moves towards a carbon-neutral future, an energy treaty became a burden. . And he reached the European Union in June to reform the ECT, but non-governmental organizations considered the agreement insufficient and demanded that the Europeans withdraw from it.
