Having promoted it to the European stakeholders (enterprise and industry, consumers, unions, lawyers, universities) at a seminar held in Brussels on Monday 27 February, the European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, will be presenting the proposal tabled at the end of 2016 by the EU and Canada, to establish a multilateral investment dispute settlement mechanism, to the EU trade ministers at an informal meeting in Valetta (Malta) this Friday 3 March.
The aim of this proposal is to create a single permanent body responsible for ruling on investment disputes in future free-trade agreements and to move away from the ad hoc investor/state dispute settlement mechanism, ISDS, which is currently included in 3,400 bilateral investment treaties throughout the world, 1,400 of which concern the member states of the EU.
This proposal is based on a new model promoted by the EU to resolve disputes between investors and states, the Investment Court System (ICS) proposed by the Commission in September 2015 (see EUROPE 11390) and provided for in the EU/Canada, EU/Singapore and EU/Vietnam free-trade agreements, and proposed by the EU in all its new free-trade and investment agreements.
Malmström and the Canadian trade minister, François-Philippe Champagne, promoted this proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January (see EUROPE 11707), after the Commission and the Canadian government unveiled it to more than 60 member countries of the WTO and eight international organisations competent in trade and investment matters at a seminar in Geneva on 16 December (see EUROPE 11687, 11691). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)