The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA), proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US (TTIP), and the plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) between the EU and 22 other States have sparked a great deal of academic and public interest. This edited collection brings together leading experts in the field of international economic law to address the legal complexities of these treaties and provide an explanation of their core principles. In the first two chapters, this book examines changing conceptions of international economic law and the main motivations for negotiating mega-regional agreements. In nine further contributions, international experts examine sectoral issues such as the trade, investment, and dispute settlement procedures envisaged in these 'mega-regional' agreements. The book goes on to consider the progress made in intellectual property protection, the problems associated with data protection, human rights, labour, and environmental standards, issues of transparency and legitimacy, and the relationship between CETA, TTIP, and TiSA on the one hand and EU law on the other. It concludes with four chapters that discuss globalization and other fundamental questions surrounding these mega-regional agreements from economic, political science, and legal perspectives.

This book analyzes the investment chapter of a new type of trade agreement between Canada and the European Union to help readers gain a better understanding of this mega-regional deal, which includes foreign investment protection. It first provides background information on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), particularly focusing on the chapter on foreign investment, including the rules on the entry of investments, their protection and the stringent dispute settlement mechanism. It goes on to explore whether these provisions are a further step toward reforming the current international investment law regime. It also examines the highly innovative part of the agreement: the inclusion of crosscutting issues, such as sustainable development. In addition, it examines the CETA investment chapter from the perspective of non-contracting parties, including Africa, Asia and Latin America. The book is of interest to academics and students in the field of international investment law. It is also an essential resource for government legal advisers, policymakers, business practitioners, and others dealing with international investment law.

This is a practice-oriented guide, including text, commentary, tables and index, for anyone dealing with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

This article-by-article Commentary on the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a vital resource for practitioners and academics in the field of EU investment protection law. CETA has been called a game-changer. In the investment chapter, it has introduced a number of key innovations, including; - the investment court system with an appellate tribunal, - guidelines on third party funding, - transparency and information sharing, - modern versions of standards of protection, and - detailed provisions on reservations and exceptions. Considering that the new dispute resolution provisions in this chapter have also passed the scrutiny of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is expected that CETA's investment chapter will serve as a blueprint for future EU investment agreements and so a full understanding of this, offered by this useful commentary, is essential for lawyers.

Investment treaties are some of the most controversial but least understood instruments of global economic governance. Public interest in international investment arbitration is growing and some developed and developing countries are beginning to revisit their investment treaty policies. The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime synthesises and advances the growing literature on this subject by integrating legal, economic, and political perspectives. Based on an analysis of the substantive and procedural rights conferred by investment treaties, it asks four basic questions. What are the costs and benefits of investment treaties for investors, states, and other stakeholders? Why did developed and developing countries sign the treaties? Why should private arbitrators be allowed to review public regulations passed by states? And what is the relationship between the investment treaty regime and the broader regime complex that governs international investment? Through a concise, but comprehensive, analysis, this book fills in some of the many "blind spots" of academics from different disciplines, and is the first port of call for lawyers, investors, policy-makers, and stakeholders trying to make sense of these critical instruments governing investor-state relations.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.

Trade liberalization has shaped international economic relations since the conclusion of the GATT 1947. The last few decades have seen a significant shift in the focus of this process: multilateralism seems to have reached its limits, giving way to regionalism, and the focus of trade liberalization has shifted to non-tariff barriers. While these developments have attracted considerable attention, exploring them from comparative perspectives has been largely neglected. Trading systems – the WTO, regional economic integrations and federal systems – are all based on the same dichotomy of free trade and local public interest: they generally prohibit the constituent parties (states) from restricting trade, but exempt them from this limitation if the restriction is warranted by a legitimate local end. The purpose of this volume is to contribute to filling the above-mentioned research gap by exploring central issues in regional economic integrations from a comparative perspective. It provides a general economic analysis of the costs and benefits of trade liberalization and the role and function of normative values in commercial policy. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the approaches used in various regional economic integrations (in North America, Europe and Latin America) and federal markets (the United States, Australia and India) regarding the balance between free trade and local public interest. Key issues in investment law, one of the most contentious elements of next-generation free trade agreements, are also addressed.