Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law - Volume 4

MR. LAIRD: Thanks very much, everybody. Welcome back to our second panel. It's titled "China BITs and MFN." We have a marvelous group for you. I'll hand it over to our moderator, Matthew Slater. Matthew is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, & Hamilton. Matthew's practice focuses on international arbitration and litigation involving sovereigns. He's a member of the ICC Task Force on Arbitration Involving States or State Entities and has done some very interesting work in this field. I know Matthew is very well prepared for this eminent group and our keen authors. I want to thank Matthew very much for taking on this task and I'll pass over the baton so to speak. Thank you, Matthew.

MR. SLATER: Thanks very much, Ian. We will be discussing today the evolving role of the most favored nation clause in investment treaty. We have two papers that have been developed by Petr Polášek and Luisa Torres, both rising stars here in Washington as it happens, Petr with White & Case and Luisa with Covington & Burling. They are really looking forward to sharing with you what they have to say.

On the panel is Stephen Fietta, Partner from Latham & Watkins in London. Stephen has had a distinguished practice with the Council of Europe, the English government, and for several years now with Latham in their public international law practice. Matt Kirtland is with Fulbright.

Their arbitration group has had extensive experience in both domestic and international arbitration involving UNCITRAL, AAA, ICSID, LCIA – you name it, he's been involved with it. Todd Weiler is sitting in for David Lindsey, who unfortunately was called away for client matters this morning. Last on our panel is Michael Nolan, who is with Milbank in New York. He also has extensive experience with treaty arbitration and is together with the rest of the panel looking forward to sharing those thoughts with you.

By way of organization, we've invited Petr and Luisa to summarize a couple of broad themes with respect to MFN clauses in general and with respect to China. A question that their work poses is whether we're on the cusp of a new wave of developments with MFN clauses. They look particularly at three recent decisions involving the possibility of expanding the scope of jurisdiction under treaties through the use of the most favored nation clause. Luisa will describe generally the history and development of MFN clauses and explain the generations of decisions. Then Petr is going to put it specifically in the China context and help us understand similar waves of developments within China's BIT practice. After that, the panel will chime in on various questions.