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Politico (24 October 2022)

BY KARL MATHIESEN AND SARAH ANNE AARUP

The fossil fuel industry is facing the disintegration of one of its most important international agreements — and the man running the show is not taking it well.

A succession of major European Union governments have now dumped the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), a deal between 53 countries originally designed in the 1990s to protect Western investments in the energy systems of post-Soviet states. 

It is the international pact most used by energy companies to sue governments when policies hit the profits they make, often from selling polluting fuels. France, Spain and the Netherlands, all conscious of their green obligations, have said the treaty's punitive legal protections for fossil fuel projects are anathema to their efforts to fight climate change.

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