The North American Free Trade Agreement (‘NAFTA' or ‘the Agreement'), ratified in 1994, is the first free trade agreement to openly incorporate environmental provisions. Its ratification engendered a sustained debate on the effects of trade on environmental degradation that has hardly abated...

The EU is about to conclude an FTA with Canada (CETA) which includes an investment chapter. A similar free trade agreement (FTA) will soon be concluded by the EU with Singapore and India. Moreover, the EU has obtained a negotiation mandate to conclude an FTA with Japan; very soon FTA with the US...

In October 2018, Trump, alongside his Mexican and Canadian counterparts, delivered what many have dubbed “NAFTA 2.0.” But the new U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) adopts not only a new name, but also a new approach to ISDS within its Chapter 14. On November 30, 2018 the leaders of...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) are both slated to contain investor protections similar to those contained in the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These measures, as included in NAFTA, allowed businesses to seek...

The fair and equitable treatment (FET) standard has long been considered an indispensable part of international investment protection agreements and is often invoked in investor-state arbitration (ISA). Particularly after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect in 1994,...