EU FDI Policy Changes In Legal Research Under The Framework Of The "Lisbon Treaty.

Before the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, competences on foreign direct investment (FDI) fall within the control of Member States; while after the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty, EU attains the exclusive competence on FDI, which means that the Union will be in charge of all the matters concerning FDI, and the Member States shall not act in this field except for implementing the EU policies or under the authorization of the Union. In such situation, the problems concerning the validity of the existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs) concluded previously by each Member States need to be settled, especially the BITs concluded with third countries. Meanwhile, Union’s exclusive competence on FDI still needs to be implemented through specific regulations. For the reasons mentioned above, EU Commission issued a regulation which stipulated the transitional arrangements on existing BITs. According to the regulation, the BITs concluded between Member States and third countries will be substituted by the investment agreements reached between the Union and third countries in the future. At the same time, EU Commission also proposed a regulation resolving the allocation of financial responsibilities between Union and Member States under the future investor-host state dispute settlement system. EU also started a lot of negotiations between Union and the third countries which have already resulted fine achievements. In accordance with the relevant EU documents, it should be noted that there will be a series of trends in future negotiation aiming at resolving the problems in existing BITs. This article will have some studies on the changes in EU FDI field after the Lisbon Treaty and the trends of future policies, hoping to attract some attentions on such changes in EU.Taking the transfer of competence in FDI field as starting point, this article will be separated into five sections. The first section is the preamble.The second section, namely chapter one, will have discussions on the influence of BITs concluded between Member States and third countries caused by the Lisbon Treaty. In this chapter, first, there will be an introduction on the BITs concluded between Member States and third countries; and then the inclusion of FDI into EU common commercial policy will be briefed; In the last part of this section, the validity of relevant BITs will be analyzed from two perspectives:the coordination between EU law and International law, and the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.In chapter two, the details on the inclusion of FDI into common commercial policy under the Lisbon Treaty will be discussed. First, the reasons for such inclusion will be discussed; second, the implementing measures adopted by EU will be presented; third, the impacts on Member States, third countries and so on will be analyzed.The trends of EU FDI policies and the impacts on China caused by such policies will be introduced and analyzed in the chapter three based on several relevant documents issued by EU institutions, mainly concerned with whether does EU need a common BIT model, the main clauses and principles which will be adopted in the future negotiation, the dispute settlement systems under future agreements between EU and third countries and so on.The last section will be conclusion.