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...

Performance requirements act as policy instruments for achieving broadly-defined economic and developmental objectives of States, especially industrial and technological development objectives. Many States consider that performance requirements distort trade and investment flows, negatively impact global and national welfare and disrupt investment decisions compared to business-as-usual scenarios. As a result, a number of States have committed to prohibiting performance requirements in international investment agreements (“IIAs.”). Performance requirement prohibitions (“PRPs”) are meant to eliminate trade-distorting performance requirements and performance requirements which replace investor decision-making by State decision-making. This thesis focuses on providing answers to two research questions: first, how do States prohibit performance requirements in IIAs? And second, how should PRPs in IIAs be interpreted and applied? For the first time, this thesis: proposes a comprehensive understanding of PRPs in IIAs by drawing notably on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”) Uruguay Round of negotiations and on the United States Bilateral Investment Treaty (“BIT”) Programme; develops a detailed typology and analysis of PRPs in IIAs through the identification of systematically reproduced drafting patterns; conducts the first critical and in-depth analysis of all arbitral awards which have decided claims based on PRPs in IIAs; analyses interpretation and application issues related to provisions that exempt government procurement from PRPs and to reservations that shield sensitive non-conforming measures or strategically important sectors from PRPs; and anticipates the application of most-favoured nation (“MFN”) treatment clauses to PRPs in the future. Finally, this thesis formulates proposals that can help interpret and apply existing PRPs and draft future PRPs in a more deliberate and informed way.

Disposal with an Investment Claim JUDr. Filip Černý International investment protection is very special legal discipline which stands at the borderline between public and private, international and national (domestic) law. The intersections between these legal areas produce a vast range of questions on the applicable law and the nature of the legal institutes inherent to investment protection. The legal system of investment protection is founded on a matrix consisting of bilateral and multilateral treaties and simultaneously shares some of the customary origins inherent to diplomatic protection of foreigners. The particularity of the investment protection system is given by the existence of the diagonal relations between the host state and the investor of the other state. The combination of the public international law sources and the diagonal relations developing inside the public international law matrix induce questions on the nature of such rights and obligations arising inside of the investment protection system among its actors. Author analyses these relations with an aim to determine the nature of the investment claim as a prerequisite for a volitional disposal of the investment claim by the investor.

The relationship between international investment agreements and EU law has attracted increased attention in past few years. The aim of this thesis is to bring a detailed analysis of various aspects of this complicated relationship. In attainment of this aim it proceeds in the following steps. After a short introduction (Chapter I.), Chapter II. briefly overviews typical content of bilateral investment treaties, following with a more detailed analysis of relevant EU law rules concerning foreign investment and subsequent comparison of both sets of rules. Chapter III. deals with investment agreements to be concluded by the EU, in particular with questions of external competence for foreign investment, responsibility for breaches of investment agreements concluded by the EU and the future shape of EU investment policy. The status of existing bilateral investment treaties concluded between EU member states and third countries is analyzed in Chapter IV. Chapter V. tackles various issues related to investment treaties concluded between member states (so called intra-EU BITs).

Investment Policy of the European Union - protection of foreign direct investment Abstract One of the changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty is the explicit inclusion of foreign direct investment and its protection in the common commercial policy of the European Union. This is one of the areas of exclusive competence of the EU. The European Union has subsequently stated negotiating bilateral agreements governing, inter alia, investment issues. However, it has not been spared from controversy and negative publicity that has been accompanying especially the TTIP and the CETA. This work aims to analyse the investment policy of the EU and mutual interaction of its institutions with the Member States and third parties. After general introduction to the topic of international investment law and EU law (chapters II. and III.), it is devoted to the issue of protection of foreign investment in the internal market. Its regime is then compared with the BIT regime (chapter IV.). Attention is then focussed towards the EU's external relations in the field of investment protection. Its competence is subjected to further analysis (chapter V.) and current results of efforts of the Commission and the EU as such are also discussed (chapter VI.). It is so in the light of possible impacts of foreign investment in terms of...

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...