Investment Screening And Wto Law

In recent years, there has been a worldwide intensification in the use of investment screening mechanisms. This surge is connected with political re-orientations, the rise of new economic powers, and security concerns. Despite the considerable effects that investment screening may have on international investment and trade, there is hardly any literature examining the consequences to be drawn from relevant WTO rules for investment screening. However, the importance of WTO law for such instruments is substantial not least due to the broad scopes of application of the GATT and GATS agreements. The risk that screening activities could be challenged before the WTO is underlined by pertinent panel reports. This book in particular uses the 2019 EU Screening Regulation as an example for illustrating the relevance that WTO law has for investment screening. It concludes that in the light of relevant WTO rulings screening activities undertaken for public order and security reasons may face considerable hurdles not least in the general exceptions and security exceptions of the GATT and the GATS.

This essential book discusses a wide range of important legal principles such as procedural fairness and reasonableness in the context of international trade and investment law. Using comparative methodology, the authors examine how those principles are reflected in treaties and how they are employed by adjudicators resolving disputes.

World trade and investment law is in crisis: new and progressive ideas are needed. Rules that facilitated globalization and supported global economic growth are being challenged. A system of global governance that once seemed secure is now at risk as the United States ignores the rules while developing countries struggle to escape restrictions. Some want to tear global institutions and agreements down while others try desperately to maintain the status quo. Rejecting both options, a group of trade and investment law experts from 10 countries, South and North, have joined hands to propose ideas for a new world trade and investment law that would maintain global growth while distributing costs and benefi ts more fairly. Paying special attention to those who have suffered from trade dislocation and to restrictions that have hampered innovative growth strategies in developing countries, they outline a progressive trade and investment law agenda in World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined.

The Chinese market is appealing, but the Chinese legal system is very complicated. A basic understanding of Chinese law is absolutely crucial for companies investing in this fast-growing and potentially huge market. Since China is moving toward a socialist market economy and is increasingly integrated into the world market, some aspects of China's commercial law are different from, while others are moving into line with, those of mature market economies. This book provides an introduction to the Chinese legal system, focusing on laws and regulations on foreign direct investment and highlights recent government policies and measures undertaken to intensify economics reforms so as to meet various challenges arising from China's accession to the World Trade Organization.

International law has historically regulated foreign trade and foreign investment differently. Distinct evolutionary pathways have led to variances in treaty form, institutional culture, and dispute settlement. With their inevitable erosion through the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries, those weak boundaries have become porous and indefensible. Powerful economic, legal and sociological factors are now pushing the two systems together. In this book, Jürgen Kurtz systematically explores the often complex and little-understood dynamics of this convergence phenomenon. Kurtz addresses the growing connections between international trade and investment law, proposing a theoretically grounded and doctrinally tractable framework to understand the deepening relationship between them. The book also offers reform ideas and possibilities, providing treaty negotiators and other government officials with a set of theoretical insights and doctrinal models that can guide actors in building a justifiable and sustainable level of commonality between the two legal systems.

The main aim of this book is to assess the importance of international rules for foreign direct investment and the major challenges to international harmonization of those rules. Particular attention is paid to the most controversial and contentious issues with the view of appraising the prospects for establishing global rules. The book is divided into three parts; the first part includes papers assessing the role of national and international legislation with further distinction being made between bilateral, regional and multilateral legal frameworks. The second part addresses regulatory issues of technology transfer, labor, environment, subsidies and investment incentives, national security, public services and sovereign wealth funds. The final part looks at the experience of some international fora in addressing these issues and at some theoretical and conceptual problems of rule harmonization. The papers have been written by legal and economic scholars from leading universities.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from third countries—a desirable form of investment to boost the EU’s economy or a threat to important EU and Member State interests that must be mitigated via FDI screening mechanisms? FDI screening is a complex, controversial and highly topical subject at the intersection of law, politics and economics. This book analyzes the political rationale behind FDI screening in the EU, reveals the legal limitations of current FDI screening mechanisms based on security and public order, and identifies legislative options for broader screening mechanisms in accordance with EU and international economic law. In particular, the book identifies the four main concerns in the EU regarding FDI from third countries: distortive competition effects; the lack of reciprocity on FDI treatment between the EU and the investor’s home country; objectives of the investor or their home country that may be detrimental to EU interests; and safety of private information. On this basis, the book analyzes the Screening Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2019/452) and its newly introduced screening ground “security or public order” and asks whether this and other similar screening grounds based on the notions of security, public order and public policy can address these concerns with regard to foreign investors. Based on an analysis of WTO law and EU primary law, it argues that they cannot. Thus, the question arises: Do the EU and Member States have the flexibility to adopt broader FDI screening mechanisms? To answer this question, the book examines the freedoms of capital movement and establishment in EU primary law, as well as various sources of international economic law such as, first and foremost, the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, but also other bi- and plurilateral trade and investment treaties, including the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. In closing, the book identifies various legislative options for broader FDI screening mechanisms—and their shortcomings.

Rich industrialized countries are insisting that the World Trade Organization launches a new round of world trade negotiations and that rules restricted to trade issues be extended to protect foreign direct investment. This is an exploration of WTO proposals from the developing country viewpoint.