Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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The European Union Commission (EC), after the 2009 entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (available at https://bit.ly/34TUxpu) updating the European Union, acquired a new competence in the foreign investment field among other areas of law.

More recently, it has decided to persuade a large majority of the member states to adhere to a project aiming to replace the old ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) processes through ad hoc arbitration or, in many cases, arbitration administered by ICSID (the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes), by a system based on a multilateral investment court, or MIC.

The result has been the signing of a multilateral agreement between those member states and the EU for the termination of all investment treaties entered bilaterally between and among those member states—so-called intra BITs, or intra bilateral investment treaties. The 2020 agreement is known as the Termination Agreement. The ground was that the intra BITs are incompatible with EU law.