| Popis: |
This intends to be a very “empirical” paper. We want to let the facts (legal facts, but facts nevertheless) speak by themselves. We simply present them in an organized way and limit to the minimum our own comments. The overall objective is to show, “by getting the legal facts right”, “the (unnoticed?) contradictory overlapping of international and domestic rules on foreign direct investment (FDI)”. The paper is structured in three main sections: the first deals with the regulation of the nationality of juridical persons, taking into account general international law and different particular international rules; the second, with the generalized violation of Most Favoured Nation Treatment (MFN) and National Treatment obligations in the area of FDI; and the third, with the current confusion between movements of capitals and right of establishment, showing how the development of EC/EU law has blurred the clear distinction between them initially established in the Treaty of Rome. In our opinion, at least one main conclusion stems from the analysis of the legal facts. The present state of the international legal framework of foreign direct investment is not satisfactory, because, among other reasons: a) There is a flagrant lack of adequate articulation between general international law and the different specific multilateral, regional and bilateral treaties and agreements. b) The contradiction between the BITs and the GATS cannot go any longer unnoticed and should be addressed; and it seems unacceptable that, in application of existing EU law, EU Member States violate systematically and permanently the BITs to which they are Parties. c) A revision of the approach followed both by the EU legislator and the ECJ seems perfectly well justified in order to allow Member States to regulate the conditions of establishment without having to assume that such a regulation is, in principle, contrary to EU law. |
