Just about a decade ago, the Energy Charter belonged to some specialized expertise of energy lawyers as well as of interested business and policies milieus. However, in recent years a broader interest in the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) spurred as the pressure has been mounting on the European Union (EU) and its Member States to abandon the document. The climate neutrality objectives declared by the EU Green Deal of 2019 engendered a paradigm shift in European policy priorities over all energy sectors. Investments into fossil fuels are being gradually discouraged, whereas coal and hydrocarbons are being excluded from the European Investment Bank support from 2022 onwards. In this context, the most overarching multilateral regime for energy investments, trade and transit—the Energy Charter Treaty adopted in 1994 and in force since 1998—came into the spotlight. Among others, a large part of expert communities argue that the ECT needs to be adapted to the new context of climate emergency and needs to exclude fossil fuels from its scope of protection.1¹ In the new context, the EU has initiated a new round of modernization appealing to reforming the Treaty itself to make it more convergent with the climate neutrality objectives. The European Commission tabled a proposal to update the ECT to the level of a new generation of investment protection to render the Treaty compatible with the need to prioritize carbon-neutral technologies, and therefore, to renew the list of areas covered by provisions of the investment protection. A large part of activists and environmental NGOs tend to go further and appeal to withdraw from the Treaty.2² Transformation of political and even juridical approaches to climate change have been acute. As a result, one may tend to believe that the Energy Charter—a framework protecting inter alia fossil fuels—becomes indeed obsolete and hypothetical EU withdrawal is justified because of the objective change in circumstances.

中文翻译：

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面对不确定性的能源宪章进程

就在大约十年前，能源宪章属于能源律师的一些专业知识以及感兴趣的商业和政策环境。然而，近年来，随着欧盟 (EU) 及其成员国放弃该文件的压力越来越大，人们对《能源宪章条约》(ECT) 产生了更广泛的兴趣。2019 年欧盟绿色协议宣布的气候中和目标使欧洲所有能源部门的政策优先事项发生了范式转变。从 2022 年起，对化石燃料的投资正逐渐受到阻碍，而煤炭和碳氢化合物则被排除在欧洲投资银行的支持之外。在此背景下，最全面的能源投资多边制度，贸易和运输——1994 年通过并自 1998 年生效的《能源宪章条约》——成为人们关注的焦点。除其他外，大部分专家团体认为 ECT 需要适应气候紧急情况的新背景，需要将化石燃料排除在其保护范围之外。 1¹在新的背景下，欧盟启动了新一轮现代化进程，呼吁对条约本身进行改革，使其更加符合气候中和目标。欧盟委员会提出了一项将 ECT 更新到新一代投资保护水平的提案，以使该条约符合优先考虑碳中和技术的需要，因此，更新投资条款所涵盖的领域清单保护。大部分活动家和环保非政府组织倾向于走得更远，呼吁退出该条约。2 ²应对气候变化的政治甚至司法方法的转变已经很紧迫。因此，人们可能倾向于相信能源宪章——尤其是保护 化石燃料——确实已经过时了，由于客观环境的变化，假设欧盟退出是合理的。