The Evolution Of EU International Investment Agreements Policy And Its Impact On China

Before the Lisbon Treaty entered into force, the right of the EU member states to conclude International Investment Agreements(IIA for short) belongs to their own. The Member States entered into investment agreements with other countries according to their actual situation, there is no unified foreign investment policy within the European Union. The common commercial policy, which originally belonged to the exclusive competence of the EU, has been extended to include foreign direct investment(FDI) in the scope of it. The Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force in 2009, expanded the scope of the Common Commercial Policy which originally belonged to the exclusive competence of the EU to include FDI. The EU has therefore obtained the international investment treaties bargaining exclusively. After that, aimed at how to develop investment treaties with third countries, the EU began to introduce a series of policy refinement. The European Commission, European Council, European Parliament and others have some corresponding files, which are expressed the main principles of the EU comprehensive IIA policy in different ways.For the need of integrating bilateral investment treaty(BIT) policies of Member States and responding to competition of emerging economies, the EU begins to develop a comprehensive IIA policy. It has taken a substantial step in the integration of investment field. The EU’s initial investment policy focus mainly on market access for investors and investments, the establishment of legal certainty and a stable, predictable, fair and appropriate regulatory environment. The focus has been reflected in five aspects as the market access, objects and forms of negotiation, the definition of investment, the improvement of dispute settlement and the balance of public interest.In recent years, because of the international community’s controversy of Investment treaty practice and the strong appeal of the EU, Member States and non-governmental organizations, the EU began to further improve the comprehensive IIA policy on the original basis, in order to better achieve the balance between the interests of investors and the host country. This improvement focused on two aspects of investor protection and investment dispute settlement mechanism. One of the biggest breakthroughs is the added provisions of the standing investment court in the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement(FTA), then the EU and Canada amended the investment provisions in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement(CETA) and changed the investors-state arbitration into permanent investment court, which completely abandoned the original ISDS mechanism, taking the first step in the multilateral standing investment court.China and the EU are currently ongoing BIT negotiations. It can be inferred the EU demands of the EU-China BIT negotiations from Research and Summary of the evolution process of EU’s IIA policy and its causes. We should be prepared to seek the methods of our country in the negotiation.