Search Results
The Green Power arbitral tribunal is the first tribunal ever (and so far, the only one) that accepted the EU law jurisdictional objections raised by an EU Member State. For this reason alone, this decision is historic. Instead of adopting a public international law perspective for determining the question whether it has jurisdiction, the arbitral tribunal adopted an European law perspective and therefore considered itself bound by the CJEU jurisprudence regarding Achmea and Komstroy. With its decision, which came out only a week before the Contracting Parties to the ect concluded their modernisation negotiations in which the EU and its Member States agreed to carve out the arbitration provision for intra-EU ECT disputes, the arbitral tribunal showed that it had a good sense of what was to come in any event. The consequences of all this are that European investors will be stuck with the domestic courts of the Member States and the European Court of Human Rights – with all their limitations.
This article examines the potential consequences of the termination agreement recently signed by 23 EU Member States, which will soon terminate the existing intra- EU BIT S of the signatory Member States. The author concludes that the retroactive application of the termination agreement to disputes that have been initiated before this termination agreement enters into force is a serious violation of the Rule of Law. He also finds that the Facilitator procedure offered by the termination agreement is not a suitable tool to settle any ongoing intra- EU BIT disputes. In light of the significant shortcomings in the judicial legal systems of many EU Member States, the author calls for the adoption of an EU Investment Protection Regulation as well as the creation of a European Investment Court. Finally, despite the fact that the termination agreement is not intended to apply to intra- EU ECT disputes, the author expects that the fallout of the Achmea judgment will lead to substantial “reforms” of the ECT in due course. All these developments will inevitably lead to a lower standard of investment and investor protection within the EU.