Books on the topic 'Most Favoured Nation Principle'

The non-discrimination principle is one of the fundamental principles underpinning international investment treaties. Its most common manifestations are the most-favoured-nation clause (MFN) and the national treatment (NT) clause. All Chinese BITs and FTAs have included some form of non-discrimination requirements—all of them have an MFN clause, whilst fewer than half of them also have an NT clause. This chapter deals with the two standards of non-discrimination treatment: most-favoured-nation treatment and national treatment. For each standard, the general meaning and application by arbitration tribunals of are analyzed. The particularities of such standard under Chinese investment treaties are then examined.

The fair and equitable treatment (FET) standard is an ‘absolute’, or ‘non-contingent’, standard of treatment, i.e. a standard that states the treatment to be accorded in terms that have their own normative content, as contrasted with the ‘relative’ standards embodied in the ‘national treatment’ and ‘most-favoured-nation’ principles, which define the required treatment by reference to the treatment accorded to other investments in similar circumstances. The FET is the most often invoked treaty standard in investor-state arbitration, present in almost every single claim brought by foreign investors against host States. This chapter tackles the FET standard from two angles: its position in the international law context and the elements identified by arbitral tribunals as forming part of this standard (and their balance).

Chapter 7 examines central treaty provisions on the treatment of investors. It begins with a discussion of the basis and character of treatment obligations, paying attention to the rule of law in international investment protection, the structure of investor treatment provisions within investment treaties, the historical evolution of the treatment standards, and the use of general rules in their interpretation. It then considers how the treatment standards have been developed and applied in contemporary arbitral awards. It conducts a detailed analysis of the principal treaty protections of fair and equitable treatment, full protection and security, national treatment, and most-favoured-nation treatment. It concludes by offering an integrated approach to the determination of contested rights.

Dissenters in the long nineteenth century believed that they were on the right side of history. This chapter argues that the involvement of evangelical Nonconformists in politics was primarily driven by a coherent worldview derived from a Congregationalist understanding of salvation and the gathered nature of the church. That favoured a preference for voluntarism and a commitment to religious equality for all. Although Whig governments responded to the rising electoral clout of Dissenters after 1832 by meeting Dissenting grievances, both they and the Conservatives retained an Erastian approach to church–state relations. This led to tension with both those Dissenters who favoured full separation between church and state, and with Evangelical Churchmen in Scotland, who affirmed the principle of an Established Church, but refused government interference in ministerial appointments. In 1843 this issue resulted in the Disruption of the Church of Scotland and the formation of a large Dissenting body north of the border, the Free Church. Dissenting militancy after mid-century was fostered by the numerical rise of Dissent, especially in cities, the foundation of influential liberal papers often edited by Dissenters such as Edward Miall, and the rise of municipal reforming movements in the Midlands headed by figures such as Joseph Chamberlain. Industrialization also boosted Dissenting political capacity by encouraging both employer paternalism and trades unionism, whose leaders and rank and file were Nonconformists. Ireland constituted an exception to this pattern. The rise of sectarianism owed less to Irish peculiarities than to the presence and concentration of a large Catholic population, such as also fostered anti-Catholicism in Britain, in for instance Lancashire. The politics of the Ultramontane Catholic Church combined with the experience of agrarian violence and sectarian strife to dispose Irish Protestant Dissenters against Home Rule. The 1906 election was the apogee of Dissent’s political power, installing a Presbyterian Prime Minister in Campbell-Bannerman who would give way in due course to the Congregationalist H.H. Asquith, but also ushering in conflicts over Ireland. Under Gladstone, the Liberal party and its Nonconformist supporters had been identified with the championship of oppressed nationalities. Even though Chamberlain and other leading Dissenting liberals such as Isabella Tod resisted the extension of that approach to Ireland after 1886, preferring local government reform to Home Rule, most Dissenting voters had remained loyal to Gladstone. Thanks to succeeding Unionist governments’ aggressive foreign policy, embrace of tariff reform, and 1902 Education Act, Dissenting voters had been keen to return to a Liberal government in 1906. That government’s collision with the House of Lords and loss of seats in the two elections of 1910 made it reliant on the Irish National Party and provoked the introduction in 1912 of a third Home Rule Bill. The paramilitary resistance of Ulster Dissenters to the Bill was far from unanimous but nonetheless drove a wedge between British Nonconformists who had concluded that religion was a private matter and would do business with Irish Constitutional Nationalists and Ulster Nonconformists, who had adopted what looked like a bigoted insistence that religion was a public affair and that the Union was their only preservative against ‘Rome Rule’. The declaration of war in 1914 and the consequent suspension of the election due in 1915 means it is impossible to know how Nonconformists might have dealt with this crisis. It was the end of an era.

In 2015, the jurisprudence of International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) tribunals and ad hoc committees largely followed established lines. However, the awards on jurisdiction in the Poštová banka and the Ping An cases evidenced very restrictive approaches to what is required in order to uphold jurisdiction over ICSID claims. On the substance of claims, the tribunals in Tidewater and in Quiborax reaffirmed the legality requirements of expropriations, a string of cases clarified the contours of the fair and equitable treatment standard, while the ad hoc committees in the Daimler and the Kılıç cases continued to diverge on the scope of most-favoured nation (MFN) clauses.

This chapter examines selected issues on the scope of intellectual property (IP) protection under international investment law and contrasts this with the approach of the international IP system. It first reviews the extent to which IP amounts to a protected investment. The chapter then analyses the operation of national treatment and most favoured nation (MFN) in international investment agreements (IIAs) and international IP treaties. Some of the absolute standards of treatment owed by a host state to a foreign investor under most IIAs are examined in their application to IP rights. Finally, this chapter scrutinises the extent to which obligations from the international IP system can be subject to investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS).

In order to protect foreign investments against the political risk created b by placing assets under a host country’s jurisdiction, investment treaties stipulate obligations regarding the ‘treatment’ that host countries must give to investors and their investments. This chapter discusses the absolute and relative general forms of treatment most frequently accorded to investors and investments by international investment treaties. These include fair and equitable treatment, national treatment, most-favoured-nation treatment, full protection and security, and minimum treatment according to the standards of international law. However, the degree of protection afforded individual investments may vary significantly among treaties. Consequently, persons interpreting investment treaty provisions should give careful attention to the differing ways in which individual treaty texts articulate their protections.

This chapter introduces the substantive obligations in investment treaties. Most offer a common core of six substantive protections to foreign investors. The chapter first considers the two ‘relative’ standards of protection—most-favoured nation treatment and national treatment. It then turns to four ‘absolute’ standards of protection: expropriation, fair and equitable treatment, umbrella clauses, and free transfer of funds. The third section examines carve-outs that remove certain state measures from the scope of application of investment treaties, defences that can justify or excuse breaches of investment treaty protections, and the standard of review that tribunals apply when examining host state conduct. The fourth and final section discusses the calculation of compensation or damages if host states have breached investment treaties.

This chapter discusses most-favoured-nation (MFN) clauses from early references in trade agreements to contemporary references in investor-state arbitrations. MFN clauses originated in early international trade practice and have continued to be incorporated in modern trade and investment treaties, both bilateral and multilateral. Their intended purpose is to lessen discrimination and encourage the growth of trade and foreign investment by ensuring that certain defined benefits accorded to one set of States (or their nationals, investments, goods, etc.) are extended to other States (or their nationals, investments, goods, etc.). In the investment treaty context, some commentators have observed that the right to a favourable dispute settlement mechanism is the primary concern of foreign investors, and investors often invoke MFN clauses to secure procedural rights that might otherwise be unavailable to them.

Like other bilateral investment treaties (BITs), Chinese BITs establish a set of general standards of treatment accorded to foreign investors by the host state. The most commonly found general standards of treatment include fair and equitable treatment (FET), (full) protection and security (PNS), most favoured nation treatment (MFN), and national treatment (NT). The first two belong to the group of non-contingent standards (or so-called “absolute standard of treatment”), whilst the latter two are forms of contingent standards (or “relative standards of treatment”). Absolute standards do not depend on treatment granted to other investors. In contrast, the relative standards are contingent on treatment given to other categories of investors, nationals of the host state in the case of NT and investors from third states for the MFN. This chapter begins with an examination of the FET standard, focusing on the different approaches of interpretations that have been developed in theory and in arbitration practice. It then analyzes the standard under Chinese BITs and assesses the implications of its standard format and any variations.

International interest is growing concerning using strength-based models of adolescent development to understand how mutually influential relations between individuals and their key settings may be a basis for positive, healthy development. Bidirectional relations models are linked to relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory, with a focus on the positive youth development (PYD) model, the most used ininternational PYD-related research and programs. A three-nation, counterfactual, comparative, longitudinal study is described to understand if Compassion International programs enhance thriving of the world’s poorest youth. RDS metatheory ideas point to the need for longitudinal studies using measures reflecting reliability, validity, and invariance across people, time, and place. This research should be framed by the “specificity principle” to identify individual and setting combinations that capitalize on the strengths of youth and place young people on a thriving trajectory.