Investment arbitration and national interest: Central and Eastern European experiences in the light of the upcoming EU-US Free Trade Agreement

Type: 
Conference
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Room: 
“Kisterem”, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Széchenyi István tér 9. 1051 Budapest
Friday, May 20, 2016 - 9:00am
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Date: 
Friday, May 20, 2016 - 9:00am to 5:30pm

Due to the approaching EU-US Free Trade Agreement (TTIP), investment arbitration came to be one of the central issues of the contemporary discourse on public and economic policy. The new generation of free trade agreements, addressing the submission of sovereign states in separate chapter, generated fierce debates and brought to the fore of social dispute decade-old problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of investment disputes and their encroachment on independent national economic and financial policy. Some argue that investment disputes are settled in the frame of intransparent ad-hoc arbitral proceedings devoid of any democratic legitimacy, which are (because of their ad-hoc and secret nature) inconsistent and unpredictable. Critics assert that the current pattern of the settlement of investment disputes quite often strips national courts (including national constitutional courts) of their legitimate powers and vests ad-hoc and intransparent bodies with the competence to adjudicate public law questions, such as the validity of national legislation adopted by parliaments having democratic legitimacy, the review of the rationality of national regulatory decisions, the supervision of the fairness of national legal procedures and the exercise of contractual rights emerging from genuine commercial agreements.

For further details, please find attached the poster of the event: