Five young Europeans file a complaint on Tuesday before the European Court of Human Rights against several states signatory to this agreement, believing that it does not allow compliance with the Paris Agreement on the fight against warming climatic.
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Maya, 19, says he has “lost his childhood”, the night when Hurricane Irma devastated the French island of Saint-Martin, in September 2017. Julia, 17, lived the floods in the valley AHR in Germany, which left more than 130 dead in July 2021. At the same time, Chaudfontaine, Belgium, Damien, 23, “saw whole sections of his life disappear” under waters. Like Marion, 31, who was in Cressier, Switzerland, in June 2021. As for Alexandros, 21, since the fires which, almost a year ago, ravaged Athens, he confides having “afraid” that The fire is triggered “as soon as he sees pines under the sun”.
Until these climatic disasters tip their lives, none of them had heard of the Treaty on the Energy Charter (TCE). Identified by NGOs and associations specializing in young people and the environment, they, Tuesday, June 21, filed a complaint before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against twelve states – United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Greece, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden – signatories of this treaty.
What is it? In the early 1990s, against the backdrop of the war of the Gulf and collapse of the Soviet Empire, Europe was worried about its energy supply and imagines, in order to secure it, an international agreement that would protect investors in this sector and would shelter them from energy policy changes.
The TCE was born, which allows them to request, before an arbitral tribunal, compensation to a state whose decisions could affect the profitability of their investments. Fifty-five countries join him, including Russia, from the countries of Central Asia, Turkey, Switzerland, the European Union (EU) and its twenty-eight member countries (Brexit has not yet taken place).
“incompatible with the Paris Agreement”
Since then, almost all European countries have paid the price, attacked one after the other by investment funds or companies that consider themselves injured by government decisions. This was the case of Germany, when she decided to leave nuclear in 2011, from the Netherlands, which acted, in 2019, the closure of coal mines by 2030 or Italy, who prohibited offshore boreholes in 2015.
Disputes are not identified. “[But], to date, we have identified 150 cases for which the amount of the compensation requested amounts to 115 billion euros, that of the compensations granted to 42.8 billion euros”, develops the expert Yamina Saheb energy policies.
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