[Dr Anastasios Gourgourinis is Lecturer in Public International Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Faculty of Law, and Research Fellow at the Academy of Athens]
I am very grateful to Anne van Aaken for her challenging and insightful
comments on my chapter
“Reviewing the administration of domestic regulation in WTO and investment law: the international minimum standard as 'one standard to rule them all'?”, as well as for providing me the opportunity to further expand and explain my argument. She essentially poses two questions: whether the simultaneous qualification of traders as investors and vice versa, is feasible; and whether the arbitral interpretations of the fair and equitable treatment standard (FET) contained in international investment agreements (IIAs) reconfigure the content of the customary minimum standard of treatment of aliens (MST). Based on the above, van Aaken questions my conclusion that, under the influence of MST permeating the trade and investment disciplines, the same set of facts regarding the administration of domestic regulation may indeed give rise to successful challenges brought before either the WTO dispute settlement body or investment arbitration tribunals. I will hence attempt to address these concerns.
Traders qua investors and vice versa
From the outset, I must note that the chapter’s analysis was founded upon (rather than intending to scrutinize and put to the test) the working hypothesis that foreign traders may qualify as foreign investors under IIAs, and vice versa. In other words, this constituted a scenario which is plainly feasible, rather than omnipresent, in so far as the realities of international trade and investment are concerned.
Anne van Aaken, on the one hand, suggests taking a functional view, based on economic and management theory, so as to further explain and expand on this proposition, and rightly so: I do agree that there is much more to be written in this respect, deserving special treatment in a separate study where multidisciplinary perspectives may indeed contribute significantly.
On the other, van Aaken cautions about the normative aspects of my hypothesis, i.e. whether foreign traders
may, in principle, qualify as investors under IIAs, especially in view of the very recent
Apotex v. USA Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility under Chapter Eleven of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This is where we disagree, for a number of reasons.
