The Energy Charter Treaty could resolve the impasse between Europe and Russia. So why won’t the Commission endorse it? By Derek Brower, journalist EUROPE’s muddle on energy policy gets worse by the month. After two years of steadily declining relations with its most important energy supplier, Russia, things reached a new low with the Commission’s recent proposal for “reciprocity” between supplier and consumer. On the face of it, it seems like a sound policy. If Gazprom wants to invest in the EU’s liberalised energy sector, it should allow European firms to do the same in Russia’s. But it has problems. The first, according to international lawyers, is that it has no legal basis. The second is that Russia will not accept it, and Moscow has interpreted it as a thinly-veiled means of protectionism.