ECT
Germany’s highest court has ruled in favor of three power companies in a dispute over a government decision to phase out nuclear energy. Vattenfall is also suing at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
Czech utility CEZ has launched arbitration seeking hundreds of millions of euros from Bulgaria for failure to protect its energy investments
The arbitration dispute concerns the treatment applied by the Romanian authorities to the investments performed by KMG and KMGI in their Romanian subsidiaries.
In a major victory for the Russian government, a Dutch court overturned an award of more than $50 billion to former shareholders of the defunct oil company Yukos.
Russian space agency Roscosmos has won a court action in France concerning $700 million in payments owed to the company, which were seized by French authorities.
An international arbitrator threw out claims from two investors protesting against Spain’s 2010 cuts to renewable energy subsidies, setting a potential precedent for other lawsuits pending.
Why we should all be worried about our BITs – or at least what foreign investors are doing with them
Britain’s role, not just with TTIP, seems to be that of facilitating and encouraging excessive corporate power over governments all around the world.
The number of claims filed by renewable energy investors under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) has risen significantly.
Why the Commission’s proposal for an “Investment Court System” still fails to address the key problems of foreign investors’ privileges
There has been an explosive increase of cases of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Modern investor-state disputes often revolve around public policy measures and implicate sensitive issues such as health and environmental protection
The European Commission will not ask EU judges to decide on the legality of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in free trade agreements.
Spain has suffered its first setback in an international arbitration process over its cuts to renewable energy subsidies.
Fifty years ago, an international legal system was created to protect the rights of foreign investors. Today, as companies win billions in damages, insiders say it has got dangerously out of control
In the rush to oppose TTIP we mustn’t lose sight of the context in which the deal is being negotiated — the hundreds of bilateral treaties that give corporations the right to sue in secret ’trade courts’.
Opponents of the trade deal being secretly negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam have moved the discussion beyond its putative impact on jobs and growth and closer to the agreement’s broader ramifications, writes the IUF’s Peter Rossman.
According to UNCTAD, 40% of all new ISDS cases in 2014 were initiated against developed countries (the historical average is 28%). A quarter of them are intra-EU disputes.
In 2014, countries concluded one international investment agreement every other week. Investors continue to use investor-State dispute settlement, but the number of new cases does not reach the record high of previous years.
State measures that reduce or nullify existing creditor rights, such as the Argentine “Lock Law” or similar moratoria on repayment, may violate BIT rights and supply investors and creditors in other jurisdictions, particularly in the eurozone, with a basis for challenging similar measures.
The European Union today took an important step towards creating a comprehensive EU investment policy, with the publication of a Regulation setting out a new set of rules to manage disputes under the EU’s investment agreements with its trading partners.
On 28 July 2014, an international arbitration tribunal announced that Russia must pay $50.02 billion in damages to former shareholders of the now defunct oil giant, Yukos Oil Company. Analysis by Kavaljit Singh.
