Dr. Yamina Saheb:

To amend the treaty, a unanimous vote of all the contracting parties is needed. This limits the room for manoeuvre by EU countries. The first thing we need to keep in mind is that the EU proposal to amend the treaty in respect of protection of fossil fuels is not Paris-compatible. Second, this proposal was rejected by the contracting parties. Whatever will be agreed, by the end there is a need to have a unanimous vote. The treaty cannot be amended unless there is a unanimous vote.

As regards whether there are any force measures, the treaty does not foresee that at all. The EU has been trying to introduce the right to regulate because, basically, when a country is a party to this treaty, it loses its right to regulate its energy sector. This is what we have learned over time. The EU has been trying to introduce the right to regulate. At present, Japan, which is another contracting party, and an important one in terms of contribution to the ECT secretariat, is completely opposed to the right to regulate and to modernisation in principle. There are other countries that do not see why the right to regulate and provisions on climate change protection should be introduced.

I refer to the ETS case. What needs to be kept in mind is that there are currently 143 known cases but there could be other cases of which we are unaware because there is no requirement for the countries or the investors to make their cases known.

It could be there are cases we do not know about. Based on the existing cases, I do not know any case that is directly related to EU-ETS. In the cases that we have, investors are related to changes in subsidies, and these are the cases in Italy and Spain, or, for example, the phase out or the closure of an installation. These are the fossil fuel cases.