EU attacks on investor rights

Abstract The European Commission, with the cooperation of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), continues a crusade against investors’ rights. This is done by reducing the rights of access by investors to an independent arbitral tribunal to resolve disputes and by making arbitral awards impossible to enforce. The CJEU judgments which are discussed in this article are arbitrary, lack logical argument, and ignore international law (in particular, the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties). Recent judgments by states that are not EU Member States have restored the validity of arbitral awards that were annulled by EU courts. The judgments show that they do not believe in the CJEU judgments, which have led to the cancellation of inter-EU Bilateral Investment Treaties and the annulment of Energy Charter Treaty awards.