Fireside Talks on Investment Arbitration in an Age of Geo-economic Power Struggles: Is Politicisation back?
- Date: 2 February 2023, 17:30–19:00
- Location: Drottninggatan 89, Stockholm
- Type: Seminar
- Lecturer: Dr Maria Fogdestam Agius of Westerberg & Partners Stockholm and Dr Constantinos Salonidis of Foley Hoag LLP Washington DC
- Web page
- Organiser: Kommerskollegium and Uppsala University
- Contact person: Steffen Hindelang, Uppsala University
Investment arbitration has been hailed as an important means of depoliticizing economic disputes involving States and foreign investors. The international dispute resolution model involving private parties was introduced inter alia to curb abuses of diplomatic protection in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But, in an increasingly multi-polarised world, investor-State disputes are still sometimes seen to form part of the arsenal in inter-State power struggles. Investors are suspected of taking instructions from their home States and host States grow more wary about the political or security dimensions of accepting certain foreign investments. This second edition of the Fireside Talks series therefore ponders whether investment arbitration is the new gunboat diplomacy and whether the drama we see in the hearing room may sometimes be a form of proxy war.