Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 September 2014
419. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the reason he supports the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlements in free trade agreements signed up to by Ireland or the EU. [34415/14]
View answerThe EU Commission is responsible for negotiating free trade agreements, including investment provisions, which comprehends investor state dispute settlement. While there are no such agreements yet concluded and signed, the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the end of the negotiations on which is expected to be announced at next week’s EU-Canada Summit, will be the first EU trade agreement to include such provisions.
Trade agreements are intended to cover flows of both trade and investment. Investment protection provisions in EU agreements are important because they are aimed at helping to insure against unfair and discriminatory treatment faced by EU business abroad. So in addition to providing protection to investors, agreements also seek to address the modalities for addressing any disputes which might arise. These are principles that underpin the rule of law in the EU and are the benchmarks that we would like to see well established in countries where our businesses trade and invest. It is for this reason that bilateral investment protection agreements are very common, not only in the EU where over 1,400 are in place, but also around the world where over 2,800 are in place among both developed and developing countries alike.
I believe that, where investor state dispute settlement provisions are part of any final agreements, it is possible to have the appropriate safeguards for public policy making, and possible to strike the right balance between providing redress for business where there is unfair treatment, and rules and procedures that prevent abuse and claims that are frivolous or without merit.
A document published by the EU Commission on its website explains the safeguards in place in the ISDS provisions in the EU-Canada Agreement. This document can be found at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/november/tradoc_151918.pdf.
The EU Commission has produced a very useful factsheet entitled “Investment Protection and Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement in EU agreements”, in which it explains why investment protection provisions are important and sets out the approach to improve on international experience. The factsheet can be found on the EU Commission’s website at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/november/tradoc_151916.pdf.
