Investor-State Dispute Settlement under review; current challenges, lack of regulation in the EU-MERCOSUR agreement and basis for the EU-UK and UK-MERCOSUR FTAs

Abstract

Investment treaties aim to protect the rights of foreign investors and provide legal certainty, generally including an Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. The increase of criticism towards ISDS -which reached its highest point during the EU-US TTIP negotiations- brought up different concerns. As a result, the Investment Court System (ICS) was developed and incorporated for the first time in the CETA between Canada and the EU, and then in other Free-Trade Agreements (FTA) signed by the EU. However, in the EU-MERCOSUR FTA there is no regulation of a dispute settlement mechanism between investors and States parties.
Currently, the United Kingdom (UK) is leaving the EU and negotiations of a new deal with the EU are being developed. In the next stages, the UK will most likely reach different agreements with sovereign states and others commercial blocks. In this sense, there is a possibility that a future EU-UK and UK-MERCOSUR agreement will need to consider whether the ISDS or the ICS will be adopted. Also, MERCOSUR will need to analyse which system it will be willing to adopt in the future in case a dispute settlement between investors and States is adopted, and could even explore a system that includes aspects of both the ISDS and the ICS.