Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I welcome both speakers and commend them on their contributions. It is very important to distinguish between the fact we have the current Energy Charter Treaty, as Dr. de Boeck said, and the modernisation process and how likely it is for that modernisation process to achieve anything, given the resistance. We know Japan is on record as saying it does not think the treaty needs changing at all. Is valuable time being wasted in addressing climate action by trying to amend a treaty that is unlikely to be amended because of the requirement for unanimity? Even if it is amended, and even if the EU proposals were all accepted in their entirety, it still would not make the agreement Paris-compliant.

Neither speaker referred to Article 16 of the treaty. While I am not a legal expert, my understanding is that it does not matter what other international agreements a country signs up to, if the provisions of those agreements are less favourable than the ECT, then the tribunal accepts Article 16 as the provision that it is going to be protected under. What does that mean for the Paris Agreement but also the ECJ ruling in both in the Achmea case and the more recent one on the ECT specifically? The tribunals are saying, “That is not our problem.” If it is not compatible with EU law, it is not their problem because countries are obliged to protect the investors under the treaty. I would like the witnesses’ views on that.

Dr. Saheb touched on the ethical question of trying to carve out an intra-EU dispute, or to remove those intra-EU disputes while expanding the treaty into the oil and gas rich global South, which will protect European investors going into those countries. What is his view on that, in particular the ethics of that from a climate justice perspective?