European Parliament calls for coordinated withdrawal of the EU from the ECT

On 21 November 2022, the European Commission was forced to concede a lack of consensus among the EU’s 27 Member States regarding the agreement in principle on the modernisation of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). This followed a meeting of the Council of the European Union on 18 November 2022 in which Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands scuppered the consensus seeking process by abstaining from the vote.