What the EU can do to protect foreign direct investments

The EU remains the largest global investor but is also the world’s largest destination for investment. However, the rules-based international investment system is undergoing profound changes, with emerging economies taking up a larger share and starting to invest in Europe in a reverse of the traditional flow. The system of international dispute settlement is increasingly being challenged or disregarded. The Lisbon Treaty gave the EU exclusive competence for protecting the investments of member states and their companies. However, the various EU institutions do not share a common approach and there are also differences between the EU institutions and member states. This discussion will explore what the EU can and should do to exercise its competence over investment policy efficiently, and especially in the case of politicized investor-related disputes.

Dan Lloyd is Vodafone's Director of Public Policy for Emerging Markets. In this role he leads regulatory and government relations strategy across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Prior to his current role, Dan was a regulatory/commercial lawyer with leading Asia-Pacific communications law firm Gilbert + Tobin, Governance Executive in the Asia Pacific and Middle East Region overseeing shareholder relations in India and China and strategic projects across the region, and Head of Regulatory for Vodafone India.

Dr Lauge N. Skovgaard Poulsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He has published in leading academic outlets on the protection of foreign investment and recently completed an advisory project for the UK government on the costs and benefits of an EU-China investment treaty. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Jonas Parello-Plesner is a Senior Policy Fellow at ECFR and the co-author of ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Investment Protection’. Previously, he was Director of a development NGO with activities in Asia and served as Denmark’s Senior Advisor on China and North East Asia from 2005-2009. He has penned briefs on ‘China and Germany: a new special relationship?’ and on ‘The Scramble for Europe’, about the Chinese economic presence in EU, the European Foreign Policy Scorecard 2010, 2012 and 2013 (China sections), as well as the memo ‘China’s Janus-faced Response to the Arab Revolutions’.

Elena Ortiz de Solórzano isa researcher and co-author of the policy brief ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Investment Protection’.