Simon Lester

The exchanges in the comments on this recent post on national treatment in investment law got me thinking about a more general national treatment point. It's easy to get bogged down in the technicalities of the national treatment obligation, so, if I may, I'd like to

This is from Canada's "technical summary" of CETA: * Limited GI rights provided to EU on: Asiago, feta, fontina, Gorgonzola and Munster * won’t affect ability of current users of these names in Canada to continue use * future users will be able to use the names only

Back in May, I mentioned some comments by economist Amar Breckenridge on the FIT/Renewable Energy WTO panel report.  Along with a colleague, he has a new piece on the AB report.  Here's an excerpt related to the AB's discussion of market definitions and the existence

If you are wondering what's going on with the Cloves, Tuna, and COOL WTO disputes, Jamie Strawbridge has an ASIL Insight with some details on the implementation status of each.  From the conclusion: If the WTO upholds U.S. compliance steps in some or all of these cases,

From the Canadian government's "Technical Summary" of CETA: Investment protection rules * Strong rules that take into consideration lessons learned from past FTAs and foreign investment promotion and protection agreements * Commitments to treat investors from Canada and the EU fairly and equitably and in non-discriminatory manner * Provisions

I've gotten to know some of the folks at Brussels think tank ECIPE over the past year, and I always enjoy their work.  Here's a new piece from research associate Michal Krol entitled "The Case for an EU-China investment agreement": http://www.ecipe.org/

From the Economist: [CETA] also takes a crack at liberalising cross-border ... trade in services in ways that previous trade negotiations have rarely attempted. ... The aim is to begin lowering barriers to trade in services just as past agreements removed obstacles to trade in goods: a worthy goal, since services generate

From my friends at the Trade, Law & Development journal: Founded in 2009, the philosophy of Trade, Law and Development has been to generate and sustain a constructive and democratic debate on emergent issues in international economic law and to serve as a forum for the discussion and distribution of

Last year, I mentioned an issue related to the meaning of national treatment that is likely to come up in the Bilcon NAFTA Chapter 11 case.  Here are some brief thoughts on the same issue from the U.S. non-disputing party submission: NAFTA’s national treatment provision, Article 1102, is

And finally, one last claim addressed by the Commission in defense of  investor state: Claim: Investors should not be allowed to challenge governments directly in international law. Only governments should be able to act against each other, via state-to-state dispute settlement. The Commission responds that: It is investors who actually