Research On EU Foreign Direct Investment Law

As an important branch of international economic law, international investment law grows alongside the need of foreign investment, which, vice verse, provides the framework for EU foreign direct investment law. The first chapter of this paper will discuss the definition of foreign investment base on the international economic background, and thus the origin of the European Union as well as foreign direct investment law. The discuss will mainly from the point of historic development and combined a depth analysis of international investment law. Then come to the definition of general foreign direct investment and EU’s definition of foreign direct investment, so as to lay the foundation of this paper. Actually, EU foreign direct investment law has its particularity, the constitution and the development of its legal framework, the legal form of the law will be discussed in detail.EU law is unique due to the division of the competences between EU and its Member States. After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, EU foreign direct investment laws have been changed significantly. Competence over foreign direct investment has been transferred from member states to the European Union. The reason for this transfer, as well as the basic principles of such competence, will be addressed in the second chapter. Of course, after the transfer of power, how to define the scope of EU competence in this field, and that of the member states also needs to be clarified. Then come to Chapter three. For the purposes to protect investment in foreign countries, the capital exporting country and the capital importing country will sign a bilateral investment agreement, which is the most common way. EU has its particularity regulation on bilateral investment agreements conclusion. Therefore, the third chapter will analysis and focus on the changes Lisbon Treaty brought. But in the field of international investment, in addition to direct investment, there are other forms of indirect investment and other investments, such as indirect investment, portfolio investment and others. In addition to foreign direct investment, the competence over investment in other areas still belongs to EU member states. If EU wants to negotiate BITs covering all foreign investment, the authorization from member states is needed.The European Commission is working with China negotiating a bilateral investment agreement to replace the existing BITs between China and its member states. As foreign direct investment is now the exclusive competence of the EU, the European Commission proposed to carry out a unified investment agreements. The bilateral investment negotiation is still on-the-way, the final chapter of this paper will analyze the background of the negotiations and the existing investments between China and EU member states. Also, the contents of the negotiations and the problems that may exist will be predicted based on deep analysis in Chapter four.