Recommended Citation
Rohit Rakhit,
Not EU Enough: The EU's Proposed Multilateral Investment Court as an Infeasible Replacement for the Intra-EU ISDS Mechanism After the Achmea Decision,
58 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L.
825
(2026)
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/jil/vol58/iss1/27
Abstract
In the landmark case Slovak Republic v. Achmea BV, the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) invalidated Article 8 of the 1992 Dutch-Slovak bilateral investment treaty (BIT), holding that it conflicted with EU law. Article 8 included a provision which mandated that any party initiating an investor-state dispute governed under the Dutch-Slovak BIT bring the dispute in front of an arbitration tribunal. Since this form of investor-state dispute resolution was customary in the EU, states and investors became concerned about what the future of investment arbitration would look like in the EU. As a solution, the EU proposed the implementation of a multilateral investment court (MIC), which would permit investors and states to settle disputes by arbitration without using ad-hoc tribunals. This Note will argue that the proposed MIC will likely not serve as a viable replacement for the invalidated intra-EU investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism due to its failure in complying with EU law, its capacity to hear investor-state disputes where EU Member States are not parties, and award enforcement concerns. (from the author)