1 The Influence of EU Common Investment Policy on the System of International Investment Law Abstract Extending exclusive European Union (EU) competence to foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Lisbon Treaty has had profound implications. The EU began to develop its own investment policy, including negotiating either international investment agreements or comprehensive trade and investment agreements with third parties. Taking into account the magnitude of the EU economy and the fact that EU Member States have concluded almost 1 400 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) out of roughly 3 300 in force worldwide, the potential of European influence over the system of international investment, based principally on BITs, is enormous. The aim of this dissertation is to assess how and in which way the new EU competence changes the system. The EU investment policy has developed a specific approach towards investment protection and investment dispute mechanism which does not envision content declared at its beginning. According to initial documents such as the European Commission's Communication Towards a comprehensive European international investment policy, the Union should have followed the available best practices of the Member States. Nevertheless, during the first bilateral negotiations with Canada and...

The absence of a relevant legal basis between huge commercial partners such as the EU as a single entity and the Russian Federation promoted the emergence of a legal vacuum. The long term cooperation between Russia and the EU has only one bilateral agreement - the Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation signed in 1994, which is however obsolete, and does not meet the contemporary needs. The adequate legal basis for Russia-EU cooperation in the gas sector is still missing. The protection of investments in the gas sector is being realized by bilateral agreements between Russia and EU member states, soft law and general international agreements, without any specifications for those two partners. The only international instrument covering the energy relations of these two partners - Energy Charter Treaty cannot be considered as a reliable mechanism, as Russia withdrew from it more than 8 years ago. The reasons of the withdrawal and the Yukos case as an illustrative example are discussed in this paper. In order to avoid uncertainty in such strategic area as gas investment relations and unpredictable decisions between the states represented by the commercial entities, there is a need to design a substantive legal basis, and a need to consider on the adequate dispute resolution body. In this thesis, key...