Exiting the Energy Charter Treaty under the law of treaties

Abstract

The origins of the Energy Charter Treaty (‘ECT’) lie in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, which led Western European states to seek to secure supplies of hydrocarbon energy from countries in the former Soviet bloc, where these resources were located; in exchange, these countries would receive foreign investment, technical cooperation and be able to trade more easily with Western Europe. To this end, the ECT set out provisions on free trade and transit, based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (‘GATT’) 1947, as well as provisions on investment promotion and protection in the energy sector. Despite its original focus on Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union, the ECT’s final geographical coverage was broader: it was open to states from all parts of the globe, and these came to include, in addition to Western European countries and those of the former Soviet bloc, Afghanistan, Australia, Japan, Jordan, Mongolia, Turkey and Yemen.