ISDS Case Map
ECT
Energy Charter Treaty
It’s time to reconsider investor-state dispute settlement; inaction risks rising costs of shifting from fossil fuels to green alternatives.
This obscure treaty from the 1990s grants sweeping rights and protections to big energy investors – mainly fossil fuel companies.
German energy company Uniper has confirmed its intention to sue the Dutch government over the country’s planned coal phase-out.
Energy conglomerates have recourse to special courts and legal regimes that they helped design – and they won’t go down without a fight.
The British company pursues its investment treaty claim under the UK-Slovenia bilateral investment treaty and the Energy Charter Treaty.
How investment treaties and investor-to-state dispute settlement grant foreign investors greater rights than Dutch and EU law.
To realise a future beyond fossil fuels, it is imperative to look at how to disentangle the legal shackles that enable companies to frustrate climate policy and shift the burden of their stranded assets onto the shoulders of taxpayers through arbitration claims.
Vattenfall will get 1.606 billion euros and agreed to end pursuing a separate damages claim in the World Bank’s ICSID arbitration tribunal.
In his opinion on March 3, the Advocate General shed some light on this question by arguing that ISDS in intra-EU disputes is indeed not allowed under EU law.
It is highly questionable whether there will be a new or revised treaty in two years that will protect the climate instead of endangering it.
