Más de 300 expertos y delegados de Estados miembros, organizaciones internacionales, ONGs, el sector privado y académicos asistieron a la Reunión sobre la Transformación del Régimen de Acuerdos Internacionales de […]
La creciente concentración de la riqueza—a menudo referida como “el tema del 1%”—plantea cuestiones graves. El Foro Económico Mundial, en sus diez principales tendencias de 2015, afirmó que: En el […]
Brasil y Mozambique firmaron el 30 de marzo de 2015 el primer Acuerdo de Cooperación y Facilitación de Inversiones (ACFI) basado en el nuevo modelo de tratado bilateral de inversión (TBI) de Brasil. El segundo se firmó el 1 de abril de 2015 entre Brasil y Angola. A diferencia de los TBI tradicionales, que están orientados a la protección de los inversores, los ACFI se centran principalmente en la cooperación y la facilitación de inversiones. Promueven formas amigables de resolver disputas y proponen la solución de disputas entre estados como respaldo; en particular, no incluyen disposiciones sobre arbitraje inversor-estado.
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For policymakers charged with investment portfolios, the challenge is not simply about attracting greater flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). At least as important is trying to maximize the domestic […]
The international investment regime (IIR) has been in crisis since it attracted the attention of the international community in the early 2000s. This crisis began with awards like Metalclad v. […]
Tobacco companies are frequently turning to international trade and investment agreements as a tool to challenge domestic tobacco control measures. Cases to date include: Indonesia’s successful challenge before the World […]
Investment treaties protect foreign investors from a range of host state conduct that affects their investments. One influential view is that the purpose of these treaties is to provide legal […]
Until recently, businesses in China seeking to make investments abroad had to go through a rigorous approval process separately conducted by two ministry-level agencies or their provincial counterparts. However, for […]
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The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has been creating expectations and stirring fears ever since it was announced by EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and US President Barack […]
While there is a fair amount of scholarly work on the determinants of expropriation, we know less about the political and economic conditions under which the broader category of investor-state disputes take place. This article provides a statistical analysis of political and economic factors that contribute to the likelihood of an investor-state dispute; and a qualitative coding of measures which have resulted in arbitration cases.
On April 4, 2014, Bolivian President Evo Morales promulgated a law establishing the general legal and institutional framework to promote domestic and foreign investment in Bolivia, while contributing to socio-economic development. This note provides an overview and analysis of the main features of Bolivia’s new law, within the context of the country’s investment law and policy, and international trends.
Several States have terminated bilateral investment treaties as they came up for renewal. The effectiveness of BIT termination, however, is limited by the “survival clauses” that are frequently included in IIAs. These provisions state that even after the treaty is terminated it will continue to apply to investments that were made while the treaty was in force for an additional 10 or 15 years.
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On January 24, 2014, an ICSID ad-hoc annulment committee dismissed a request by the Argentine Republic to annul a June 2011 arbitral award for harm suffered to an investment in a Buenos Aires water services concession. While this was one of the smaller awards rendered against Argentina, it is nonetheless of utmost significance for Argentina and all countries facing claims under investment treaties.
The recent Australian elections were decided mostly by domestic policy issues, but their outcome had an impact beyond the border as the new government decided to rethink Australia’s somewhat unique view on the international investment regime. In changing course, has the Australian government simply joined the rest of the world?
The International Institute for Sustainable Development studied seventy contracts between states and foreign investors involving long-term leases of farmland. We have come up with our own model contract that we believe answers many of these concerns.
The recent and ongoing trend towards corporate, especially foreign, investment in developing countries’ agricultural sectors has evoked sharply contrasting attitudes. For some, this “rediscovery” of agriculture as a focus of investment provides opportunities to again promote the sector within the larger agenda of economic development. For others, it has raised serious concerns about whether such investments, especially those involving large scale land acquisitions, are conducted in a manner which respects people’s rights, livelihoods and resources.
Investment treaty arbitrators have adopted a de facto policy of favouring parallel claims by declining to yield to contractually-agreed dispute settlement provisions. The policy is widespread among tribunals but appears out of step with judicial restraint based on principles of party autonomy, sanctity of contract, or the avoidance of parallel proceedings.
The system of international investment arbitration suffers from serious flaws. In South America, more than other regions, these failings are apparent from direct experience. Perhaps because so many countries in the region have faced multiple international investment arbitrations based on multi-million dollar claims for compensations, a number of alternatives to the current system of investment dispute resolution have been proposed by governments, multilateral institutions and academics.
With governments around the world pushing efforts to negotiate and approve mega-investment treaties, it is important to be clear on just what these investment treaties do and do not mean. This article compares U.S. domestic law and international treaty rules on state liability for regulatory changes. It shows that arbitral tribunals have interpreted investment treaty rules in a manner far more favorable to the interests of investors than the approaches adopted in U.S. courts.
National investment boards or agencies operate in several countries with a view to attract foreign investment. Towards this objective, they often maintain websites highlighting the advantages of investing in their country. This article surveys some common categories of representations and promises made on the websites of national investment boards and discusses their potential legal implications.
Arbitrations by ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil against Venezuela feature some of the largest claims ever to have been brought against a state by international investors. However, a careful reading of dispute’s factual background suggests that these claims bear little connection with the deals that these oil firms actually agreed to in Venezuela.
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In July 2013, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) adopted a package of rules aiming to ensure transparency in investor-State arbitration, ratifying the work done by delegations to UNCITRAL—comprised of 55 Member States, additional observer States and observer organizations—over the course of nearly three years of negotiations. With the adoption of the new rules, there is now a carefully negotiated and widely approved template that can serve as a model for how to conduct investor-State arbitrations transparently.
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The inclusion of market access commitments in investment agreements has proven divisive. This article looks at where China stannds on this issue.
China is often singled out as one of the big ‘land grabbers’, although it strongly refutes these claims. We set out to verify whether reports about Chinese investments were accurate or not.
A major challenge for investment treaty designers and adjudicators is to separate opportunistic behavior by host states that should be sanctioned under international law from bona fide public policy measures that should not. This article suggests that International Investment Agreements need to be both ‘smarter’ and more ‘flexible’ to better make that distinction. It draws on economic contract theory as a basic framework, and political economy theory for fine-tuning.
The expanded role played by Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) since the global financial crisis has not been matched with stronger rules that address the human rights-related impacts of ECA financed projects. Given narrow set of regulations that currently apply to ECAs, this brief article argues that more needs to be done to ensure that ECA financed projects do not cause harm to home states.
Very few BITs refer directly to human rights issues. However, when they do, they clearly do not impose any binding obligations on foreign corporations. The following paragraphs will provide a concrete analysis of how BITs could be drafted (or redrafted) to incorporate non-investment obligations.
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Broad interpretations of the standard for fair and equitable treatment (FET) by investment tribunals have become a source of increasing controversy. In theory, linking FET to customary international law (CIL), which is formed through the “general and consistent practice of states” that they follow out of a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris), results in a standard of protection that is more deferential to the regulatory authority of governments than the “autonomous” standard. In practice, however, investment tribunals continue to construe even CIL-based FET provisions to impose broad limits on government authority by accepting, without any evidence of state practice or opinio juris, the pronouncements of previous tribunals as definitive evidence of the standard under CIL.
It is quite common in investment arbitration for the respondent State to include in its defense to treaty claims one or more criticisms of the investor’s underlying conduct. Yet while such arguments feature prominently in State defenses, they are rarely framed as counterclaims seeking affirmative relief. The reason may lie in an instinctive preference by States to pursue any affirmative claims in their own courts. But it may also lie in perceived limits to the jurisdiction of international tribunals to hear State counterclaims.
Two recent ICSID decisions have reached entirely different conclusions on the issue of jurisdiction over State counterclaims. This essay touches briefly on certain jurisprudential and policy factors that may explain the divergent results and frame future cases for further analysis.
In late 2012, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) officially endorsed an “institutional view” on the management of capital flows. This short note provides an overview of the new IMF view, pinpoints how it may conflict with country obligations under trade and investment treaties, and discusses remedies for reform.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has released its Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable Development (IPFSD). This article engages in an independent assessment of the IPFSD.
The Sixth Annual Forum of Developing Country Investment Negotiators was held on October 29-31, 2012, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The forum encourages participants to develop their own critical perspectives on issues which are germane to the negotiation of international investment treaties.
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The South African Development Community (SADC) Model Bilateral Investment Treaty Template and Commentary was completed in June 2012 by Member States of the Community. Its completion marks the end of an 18 month process of consultations and drafting among government representatives and is intended as a guide for member states in future investment treaty negotiations.
On 12 June 2012, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development launched its Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable Development. IPFSD comes at a time when the international investment regime is in a state of «transition» and when an increasing number of governments are reviewing their investment-related regulatory frameworks, both at the national and international levels.
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From October 1-5, 2012, a working group of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law met in Vienna to continue work on how to ensure transparency in treaty-based investor-state arbitration. It was the working group’s fifth week-long meeting on the topic, but will not be the last.
National investment codes[1] may function as potential sources of international investment law. In other words, states may make unilateral undertakings within the framework of national investment legislations and, as a […]
With the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, in force since December 2009, foreign direct investment fell under the exclusive competence of the European Union (EU). Since then the three European institutions—the […]