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Powering social rights : how the European Social Charter protects the right to energy
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1725-6739
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EUI; LAW; Working Paper; 2025/08
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KOTSONI, Maria, Powering social rights : how the European Social Charter protects the right to energy, EUI, LAW, Working Paper, 2025/08 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/92973
Abstract
The European Social Charter does not explicitly protect a right to energy. However, in this paper I show that recent developments in the European Social Charter (ESC) system suggest that aspects of this right are increasingly protected under the treaty. This increasing implicit protection is suggested, firstly, by the recent case law of the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR), occasioned by a collective complaint raising questions related to access to adequate energy. Secondly, the increasing protection of aspects of the right to energy is also occasioned by recent innovation in the reporting procedure of the treaty, leading to an ad hoc reporting procedure on social rights in the cost-of-living crisis. In its recent case law and adhoc report, paired with the adoption of a Statement of Interpretation, the ECSR has integrated claims to energy access in the interpretation of a series of ESC rights and it has outlined new states’ obligations, making the right to energy part of the treaty.