Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration Moot
About the FDI Moot Cases
Each year's FDI Moot Case Committee is selected the preceding year and begins its work in June. Liaising with the FDI Moot's Advsiory Board, in particular Mr Usoskin and Mr Martini, and its Directors, the Committee develops a factual and procedural context and the issues to be argued in the competition. It submits a concept and then first draft to review boards of academics and practitioners. The revised draft is then approved, proof-read and formatted by the end of the year, and then published.
The Case 2021
The 2021 case will deal with an investment in the aviation sector made in the course of a privatisation program, which does not have the smooth landing that the investor had hoped for. The ensuing arbitration between the investor and an economically distressed host State pursuant to a new-generation investment agreement and the ICSID Arbitration (Addition Facility) Rules raises questions of standing of an enterprise with alleged ties to its home State, admissibility of amicus briefs, expansive use of the MFN provision in a treaty, and unconventional claims of violation of the FET and Denial of Justice standards. The Case will be published at the end of January.
2021 Case Committee
Past Cases
The 2020 Case
... involves a coal power generation plant that is to be phased out well before it designed operational life. The phase-out is mandated by an instrument issued by the REIO of which Respondent is a Member State. The Claimant is a financial institution which bases its claim on its acquisition of the original financing agreement and related rights through assignment. One of the arbitrators is challenged, inter alia, based on views he has previously taken on environmental disputes..
2020 Case Committee
The 2019 Case
... involves the Respondent State blocking social media platforms for their alleged part in fomenting civil unrest. The three Claimants allege expropriation and violation of fair and equitable treatment, while the Respondent objects to the ICSID tribunal’s jurisdiction on the basis of its denunciation of the ICSID Convention and the plurality of Claimants. The Respondent also seeks to enjoin the Claimants’ international media campaign against it while the proceedings are in progress.
The 2018 Case
...considers how a new government has suspended the extraction of a rare earth, for which a foreign investor held the sole mining concession. The suspension was based on a study showing increased health risk in the nearby population. The suspension, confiscation of rare earths already prepared for export and customers’ contract terminations led the investor to shut down its operations, only then to discover government plans to license extraction by another investor.
The 2017 Case
....considers how Mercuria, a State faced with a “greyscale” epidemic, has treated a foreign investor, patent-holder of the active ingredient in an effective greyscale treatment, by first breaching a supply agreement, which was the basis for the investor’s production facility investments in Mercuria, and failing to enforce the consequent arbitration award and by then granting a compulsory license to a state-owned manufacturer.
The 2008 Case
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