Добавил:
Upload Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз: Предмет: Файл:
Muchlinski, The Oxford Handbook of Internationa...docx
Скачиваний:
0
Добавлен:
01.05.2025
Размер:
2.29 Mб
Скачать

In addition, the distinction between breach of contract and expropriation has become relevant in the related jurisdictional debate about contract versus treaty

end p.419

claims in international investment arbitration. 70 In this context the ICSID tribunal in the Impregilo case held that:

[i]n order that the alleged breach of contract may constitute a violation of the BIT, it must be the result of behaviour going beyond that which an ordinary contracting party could adopt. Only the State in the exercise of its sovereign authority [‘puissance publique’], and not as a contracting party, may breach the obligations assumed under the BIT. 71

The tribunal continued to assert that ‘[t]he threshold to establish that a breach of the Contracts constitutes a breach of the Treaty is a high one’. 72 And, with a view to the issue of breaches of contract as expropriations, it expressly ‘recognize[d] that the taking of contractual rights could, potentially, constitute an expropriation or a measure having an equivalent effect’. 73

Similarly, in Consortium RFCC v Morocco , an ICSID panel insisted that a breach of contract would not normally constitute a breach of treaty provisions ‘unless it be proved that the state or its emanation has gone beyond its role as a mere party to the contract, and has exercised the specific functions of a sovereign’. 74

Thus, it is not surprising that the ad hoc arbitral tribunal in the Eureko case concluded that:

[t]here is an amplitude of authority for the proposition that when a State deprives an investor of the benefit of its contractual rights, directly or indirectly, it may be tantamount to a deprivation, in violation of the type of provision contained in [a BIT] Article [protecting against expropriation]. The deprivation of contractual rights may be expropriatory in substance and in effect. 75

Nevertheless, there are few cases of actual findings of expropriation of contractual rights because the threshold of governmental action appears to be very high.

(3) Indirect Expropriation

It is on the whole undisputed that the prohibition of expropriation of foreign property, both under customary international law and under applicable treaty law, covers

end p.420

not only formal takings but also indirect expropriation. This is clearly evidenced by language prohibiting both direct and indirect expropriation or making clear that the notion of expropriation includes indirect expropriation. For instance, the 1967 OECD Draft Convention on the Protection of Foreign Property provided in Article 3 that ‘[n]o Party shall take any measures depriving, directly or indirectly, of his property a national of another Party unless the following conditions are complied with … ’. 76

Most BITs prohibit ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ expropriations or expropriations and ‘measures having equivalent effect’. 77 Sometimes they even use a combination of both prohibitions—a possibility that was also adopted in the Draft MAI:

A Contracting Party shall not expropriate or nationalise directly or indirectly an investment in its territory of an investor of another Contracting Party or take any measure or measures having equivalent effect (hereinafter referred to as ‘expropriation’). 78

Similarly, Chapter 11 of the NAFTA prohibits ‘measure[s] tantamount to nationalization or expropriation’:

No Party may directly or indirectly nationalize or expropriate an investment of an investor of another Party in its territory or take a measure tantamount to nationalization or expropriation of such an investment (‘expropriation’), except … 79

The Energy Charter Treaty provides:

(1) Investments of Investors of a Contracting Party in the Area of any other Contracting Party shall not be nationalized, expropriated or subjected to a measure or measures having effect equivalent to nationalization or expropriation (hereinafter referred to as ‘Expropriation’) except where such Expropriation is: … 80

Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]