Economic integration agreements

This chapter offers a commentary to Article 25 of the Energy Charter Treaty, which sets out rules to be applied where a Contracting Party is also party to an Economic Integration Agreement (EIA). The chapter deals with the difficulties of defining and regulating this kind of international legal instruments, whose scope may vary significantly and that may be established at the multilateral, regional, interregional, plurilateral or bilateral level. It then explains how Article 25 provides a general exception establishing that the provisions of the treaty cannot be interpreted in a way to oblige a Contracting Party, which is also party to an EIA, to extend, by means of most-favoured-nation treatment, to another Contracting Party which is not a party to that EIA, any preferential treatment applicable between the parties to that agreement.