France is party to 90 investment protection agreements with 94 countries, 84 of which are currently in force (6 have been terminated, but the survival clause remains active). The geographical reach of France’s treaty network could expand further if the CETA agreement with Canada is eventually ratified.

These agreements protect a significant volume of fossil fuel investments
France ranks third among countries whose investment treaty network protects the largest amount of fossil emissions, according to a July 2024 study by E3G, with 188 million tonnes of potential CO₂eq emissions, or 9.4% of the global total.
Our new study reveals which treaties are the most protective in this regard. After the Energy Charter Treaty—which France withdrew from in 2023—the most impactful bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are those with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, China, Nigeria, Iraq, Mozambique, Kazakhstan, Libya, Argentina, Namibia, and Russia. In these countries, French fossil fuel investments protected by investment treaties are likely to generate more than 5 Mt of CO₂eq annually.

Sanctioned Russian oligarchs are using these treaties to sue France

• Severgroup and KN Holdings v. France (2021) involves two Russian investment firms owned by an internationally sanctioned oligarch. They filed a claim against France after the government refused to extend the open-pit gold mining concession in French Guiana (Montagne d’Or project). In July 2025, three civil society organisations (the Collectif des Premières Nations, the Organisation des Nations Autochtones de Guyane, and Guyane Nature Environnement) submitted amicus curiae observations before the international arbitral tribunal. (See our detailed case study)
• A new case was registered in June 2025, based on the France–Armenia treaty. It opposes S. Karapetyan, a Russo-Armenian businessman and owner of one of Russia’s largest industrial and construction conglomerates—Tashir Group—against France, following the seizure of his real estate assets under suspicion of money laundering.

Some agreements are particularly outdated

• The BITs with Serbia and Montenegro (inherited from the 1974 France–Yugoslavia treaty) are non-reciprocal. They include a stabilisation clause protecting French investors from changes in national regulations and an unlimited survival clause that ensures the treaty remains in effect even after termination.
• A large number of these treaties are retroactive, extending protection to investments made before the treaties were even signed.

France’s treaty network is incompatible with EU law and international climate commitments, particularly:

• Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement, which requires financial flows to align with the climate objectives of the signatories.
• Opinion 1/17 of the CJEU on CETA, which defined compatibility criteria absent from older treaties.
• The European Parliament resolution on the future of EU international investment policy (June 2022).

For these reasons, the French High Council on Climate should assess the compatibility of these BITs with France’s climate commitments.

The French government should also unilaterally terminate the 76 treaties whose initial terms have expired and plan to denounce the others as soon as it becomes legally feasible.

If France fails to act, the European Commission should call on France and other Member States to terminate these outdated BITs.

“French MEPs, MPs, and the government played a leading role in the battle over the Energy Charter Treaty, calling for ambitious reform and choosing withdrawal when that failed. But in the realm of investment protection, the ECT is just the tip of the iceberg. France still has a major clean-up to do with its stock of old treaties that pose the same, if not greater, challenges.”
— Stéphanie Kpenou, Advocacy Officer for EU Trade Policy Reform at the Veblen Institute

“These investment treaties are largely a legacy of decolonisation, designed to protect French corporate interests in the Global South. Today, they hinder and inflate the cost of climate, environmental and public health efforts, both in partner countries and in France. It is high time they were dismantled.”
— Mathilde Dupré, Co-director of the Veblen Institute