Meeting in formally in Valetta on Friday 3 March, EU trade ministers backed the proposal on the table from the European Commission and the Canadian government on establishing a multilateral investment dispute mechanism.
‘The Commission gave a detailed account of the work it is conducting together with the government of Canada to raise awareness amongst third countries of the necessity to reform investment dispute settlement by having a more transparent, efficient and permanent multilateral investment court system and member states encouraged the Commission to gain critical mass and support for this project and seek further technical work at Council level to progress further aiming towards establishment of a multilateral system for the investment disputes,’ explained Maltese economy minister Christian Cardona after the meeting.
The French secretary of state for trade, Matthias Fekl, told this newsletter that there was very strong support from France and Germany and overall, it was very positive. The EU will work to ensure the granting by 31 December 2017 of a negotiating mandate to the European Commission to hold formal talks, he explained.
A diplomatic source says that only Hungary and Slovenia expressed doubts on Friday.
The proposal’s aim is to create a single and permanent body responsible for settling investment disputes in future free-trade agreements, moving away from the ad hoc system for settling investor-country trade disputes, ISDS. (EUROPE 11687, 11691).
The proposal is based on the new model promoted by the EU for settling disputes between investors and countries, the investment court system (ICS) proposed by the Commission in September 2015 (see EUROPE 11390), foreseen in the free-trade deals between the EU and Canada, Singapore and Vietnam, and proposed by the EU in all its new free-trade and investment agreements. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)