On 29 June 2012, the European Union and the six partner countries in Central America – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama – signed an Association Agreement (the EU-Central America Association Agreement) (the “Association Agreement“). The purpose of this FTA was to develop trade and investment relations between parties. On 13 May … Read more
The US Trade Representative (USTR) is reportedly finalizing a proposal to dramatically restructure NAFTA’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, transforming it into an “opt-in” regime under which each NAFTA state would elect whether or not to permit investors of other NAFTA parties to bring claims directly against it.[1] The proposal apparently remains under discussion within … Read more
On August 16, 2017, trade representatives of the United States, Mexico and Canada will convene in Washington, DC for the first of seven scheduled rounds of negotiations in relation to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The negotiations have been covered extensively in national and international media and, given the scope of the interests … Read more
The United States will lobby for changes to the investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”) provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”) in the upcoming discussions to renegotiate the regional treaty. ISDS reform is one of several “negotiating objectives” announced last month by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (the “USTR”), the federal … Read more
After a lengthy final period of negotiation in Atlanta, it has been announced that the TPP, the world’s largest mega-regional trade and investment deal, has been agreed. The investment chapter is not yet available but is briefly summarised on USTR’s website here. As anticipated, the TPP includes substantive investment protections found in many investment agreements, … Read more
As discussed in our blog post here, the TPP is a major free trade agreement between twelve countries in the Asia Pacific and the Americas that has been under negotiation for over four years. These twelve countries are the USA; Canada; Japan; Australia; New Zealand; Singapore; Vietnam; Malaysia; Chile; Peru; Mexico; and Brunei. On 24 … Read more
Yesterday afternoon, the EU Commission issued its Report on the outcome of the public consultation on the inclusion of investment protection and investor-state-dispute-settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being negotiated between the EU and the US. As discussed in our blog post here, the public consultation was launched against the backdrop … Read more
