'Germany to leave Energy Charter Treaty', 11 November 2022

The three coalition parties forming the German government on Friday agreed the country should leave the Energy Charter Treaty, making it the biggest economy to announce it's quitting the embattled deal.

"We are consistently aligning our trade policy with climate protection and are withdrawing accordingly from the Energy Charter Treaty,"  Franziska Brantner, a parliamentary state secretary in the economy and climate ministry, said in a press release.

The pact, designed in the 1990s, allows international investors in energy projects to sue governments for profits lost as a result of policy changes. It’s now viewed as a major threat to national climate plans to shut down coal plants or limit production of oil and gas.

The decision follows announcements from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Poland that they will withdraw from the pact.

It is a major blow to the deal and also to the European Commission, which has urged countries to back reforms to the treaty. The Commission completed a negotiation with other treaty members this summer that would give the EU an exemption to phase out protections for fossil fuel projects in the EU over the next 10 years.

"The Energy Charter Treaty is a toxic treaty, which slows down the energy transition. It is therefore immensely important that Germany has finally announced its withdrawal," said Anna Cavazzini, the European Parliament's point person on the file and a member of the German Greens...