As our societies face new challenges and make new demands from policies addressing international investment, there is a new urgency to profoundly reconsider treaties addressing investment. This paper ...was prepared originally as background for initial inter-governmental and public discussions at the OECD about future investment treaties as well as possible alternatives. The paper surveys potential roles for treaties addressing investment in (i) contributing to sustainable development and responsible business conduct; (ii) preserving and improving investment market access and liberalisation of investment, and facilitating FDI; (iii) regulating subsidised state-owned enterprises, competition in subsidies for investment, and digitalisation; and (iv) addressing the interests of treaty-covered and other investors in reasonable legal predictability and a level playing field, together with the need for policy space and public support for treaty policy. It considers potential use of more flexible and varied remedies and implementation mechanisms. A final section briefly considers treaty policies as governments and societies confront the urgent challenge of climate change.
Investment treaty policy increasingly interacts with business responsibilities. This scoping paper first surveys the converging approaches to responsible business conduct (RBC) and business and human ...rights (BHR) as reflected in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and core ILO standards. Legislative developments and court cases are examined. The paper focuses primarily on government action as part of a flexible “smart mix” to address RBC and maximise the positive contribution of business to sustainable development, but also examines some business and civil society action.Three aspects of trade and investment treaty interaction with business responsibilities are considered: treaty impact on policy space for governments including for the non-discriminatory regulation of business; treaty provisions that buttress domestic environmental, labour or other law; and provisions that speak directly to business by, for example, encouraging RBC or establishing conditions for access to investment treaty benefits.
Compensation for adjudicators is generally considered as a core issue for judicial independence and for attracting good judges in the institutional design for courts. This paper examines compensation ...systems for adjudicators and dispute settlement administrators in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). The paper uses in part a comparative perspective based on approaches in domestic courts in advanced economies, an approach rarely taken in analysing investor-state arbitration.The first section of the paper provides historical context and examines the reform of remuneration of judges to replace private litigant fees with salaries in colonial America and the United States, France and England in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Subsequent sections address debates over the impact of compensation systems on adjudicators; contemporary approaches to the compensation of judges in advanced economies; the co-existence in advanced economies of national courts with salaried judges since the early 19th century with generally strong support for commercial arbitration based on ad hoc fee-based remuneration; and similarities and differences between commercial arbitration and investment arbitration, focusing how the largely similar compensation systems may have different effects and be differently perceived by the public.Annexes to the paper report on discussions about adjudicator compensation at the 2016 OECD Investment Treaty Conference and gather some preliminary facts about adjudicator and dispute administrator compensation in investor-state arbitration as well as the investment court system included in the recent EU-Canada CETA trade and investment agreement.
The fair and equitable treatment (FET) provision has leapt to prominence in the last 15 years as the principal ground of liability at issue in many if not most investment treaty arbitration claims. ...In debates about the impact of investment treaties on the right to regulate, FET is second only to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) as the most-cited provision. This paper examines government action to address the balance between investor protection and the right to regulate by limiting fair and equitable treatment provisions to the minimum standard of treatment under customary international law (MST-FET). The paper reviews the distinction between MST-FET clauses and autonomous FET clauses, and notes growing use of an express MST-FET approach in many regions. NAFTA governments’ views about the nature of the MST-FET standard, how it is identified, and its content are then examined in detail. An initial focus on NAFTA, while limited, is justified due to many singularities in NAFTA, including numerous government interpretations of MST-FET since 1994, their availability to the public and the comparatively higher success rate of NAFTA governments in defending FET claims. The paper concludes with brief comparisons between the government views and the views of ISDS tribunals and commentators.
There is vigorous debate about reforms to address the balance between investor protection and the right to regulate in the over 3000 existing investment treaties. This paper first notes the growing ...trend to analyse particular treaty rules rather than treaties as a whole and the importance of comparative analysis of balancing under other regimes. It then outlines issues in four areas: (i) the types of regulation potentially at issue in investment treaty claims by covered investors; (ii) the types and levels of investor protection; (iii) the degree of impact of treaties on regulation; and (iv) the processes and institutions that may be involved in balancing interests in investor protection and the right to regulate. While the paper recognises that dispute resolution institutions have a significant impact on the balance and the right to regulate, it focuses primarily on substantive issues in light of other ongoing work on dispute settlement.
Many governments have expressed concerns about the uncertainty linked to the perceived inconsistency of treaty interpretation in Investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS). An OECD-hosted ...intergovernmental investment roundtable has been considering a range of tools through which governments can take action to improve the interpretation of investment treaties and some participants suggested consideration of the potential role of State-to-State dispute settlement (SSDS) in this area.
This paper responds to this interest. The first part sets forth a rough typology of possible SSDS claims under investment treaties. The second part outlines policy issues relating to a possible type of SSDS claim which would be most relevant to the question of interpretation, for so-called “pure” interpretation of an investment treaty. The analysis seeks to identify policy reasons why governments might wish to provide for or exclude the power to obtain pure interpretations of investment treaties from SSDS tribunals or to make it broad or narrow. The final section examines SSDS cases under investment treaties addressing claims for interpretation.
Governments have been examining the potential role of joint government interpretations of investment treaties at OECD-hosted intergovernmental investment roundtables. Now well-established in the ...model BITs and treaty practice of the NAFTA governments, express provisions for such joint interpretations have recently been included in an increasing range of treaties and investment policies around the world. But while a significant number of major recent treaties contain such express provisions, most investment treaties do not expressly address joint interpretations and thus leave the issue to more general rules.
This paper addresses the general legal framework applicable to joint agreements by treaty parties about the interpretation of treaties. It outlines some key concepts and distinctions in treaty interpretation, and then considers the effects of treaty interpretations and amendments on third parties and in particular on investors covered by a treaty. Joint government interpretation can be binding or non-binding on investment arbitration tribunals. The paper concludes with brief consideration of possible criteria that could affect the persuasiveness of non-binding guidance.
Advanced systems of domestic corporate law generally apply a “no reflective loss” principle to shareholder claims. Shareholder claims are permitted for direct injury to shareholder rights (such as ...voting rights). But shareholders generally cannot bring claims for reflective loss incurred as a result of injury to "their" company (such as loss in value of shares). Only the directly-injured company can claim.
In contrast, shareholder claims for reflective loss have consistently been permitted under typical bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in recent years. This paper analyses investment treaty provisions relating to shareholder claims. It addresses (i) treaty regimes for shareholder recovery and company recovery of damages, including their consequences for investor protection and government liability; (ii) the interaction of reflective loss claims with treaty provisions that seek to limit multiple claims; and (iii) treaty provisions applicable to government objections to shareholder claims for reflective loss.
Corporate law in advanced domestic legal systems on the one hand, and typical treaties for the protection of foreign investment on the other hand, treat claims for damages by company shareholders ...differently. Advanced domestic systems generally bar shareholders from claiming for reflective loss – loss that arises from injury to "their" company (such as a decline in the value of shares). The claim for the loss belongs to the injured company and not to its shareholders. In contrast, shareholder claims for reflective loss have been widely permitted under typical investment treaties over the last 10 years. Ongoing OECD-hosted inter-governmental dialogue on investment law is considering whether there are policy reasons justifying the different approaches to shareholder claims for reflective loss.
This paper examines shareholder claims for reflective loss under investment treaties in light of comparative analysis of advanced systems of corporate law. The paper considers the impact of allowing shareholder claims for reflective loss on key characteristics of the business corporation. The paper also explores possible responses by different categories of investors to the availability of shareholder claims for reflective loss under investment treaties.
Claims by company shareholders seeking damages from governments for so-called "reflective loss" now make up a substantial part of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) caseload. (Shareholders’ ...reflective loss is incurred as a result of injury to “their” company, typically a loss in value of the shares; it is generally contrasted with direct injury to shareholder rights, such as interference with shareholder voting rights.) This paper considers the consistency issues raised by shareholder claims for reflective loss in ISDS.
The paper first compares the approach to shareholder claims in ISDS with advanced systems of national corporate law (and other international law). ISDS arbitrators have consistently found that shareholders can claim individually for reflective loss in ISDS under typical BITs. This can be seen as a success story from the point of view of consistency of legal interpretation and improves investor protection for potential claimant shareholders in many cases. In contrast, however, advanced national systems and international law generally apply what has been called a "no reflective loss" principle to shareholder claims.
Second, the paper analyses the policy issues relating to consistency that are raised by shareholder claims for reflective loss in ISDS. National and international law barring shareholder claims for reflective loss is often explicitly driven by policy considerations relating to consistency, predictability, avoidance of double recovery and judicial economy. Limiting recovery to the company is seen as both more efficient and fairer to all interested parties. In contrast, ISDS tribunals and commentators have generally given limited consideration to the policy consequences of allowing shareholder claims for reflective loss. The third part of the paper addresses the issue of company recovery (including two different existing systems which expand the ability of foreign-controlled companies to recover in ISDS) and its relevance to shareholder claims for reflective loss. The paper also contains a series of questions for discussion and has been discussed by governments participating in an OECD-hosted investment roundtable.
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