Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals

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Investment Arbitration as Ransom? The EU Sanctions Regime and ‘Administrative Chill’

October 15, 2026

Introduction and Factual Background: Fridman v Luxembourg In February 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union placed Mikhail Fridman on its sanctions list. The designation subjected the Russian-Israeli businessman’s funds and economic resources to an asset freeze, affecting interests held through Luxembourg - including his 37.9% ownership of the investment group LetterOne. Luxembourg consequently became the focal point in Fridman’s efforts to challenge the sanctions and recover access to his investments. Those efforts would eventually place the country in the position of defending its first known investment treaty arbitration. The arbitration commenced in 2024, with Fridman seeking approximately $16 billion in compensation. His claim invokes the 1989 Bilateral Investment Treaty between the Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union and the Soviet Union (BLEU – Russia BIT). While the details are not publicly available, his claim is that Luxembourg’s freezing of Fridman’s assets interfered with his investments protected under the BIT, allegedly amounting to indirect expropriation. As such, the proceedings bring Luxembourg’s implementation of EU sanctions measures within…

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Essential Security Interests Exceptions and the Limits of Self-Judgment: Implications of Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua

March 19, 2026

In recent years, national security has increasingly served as a justification to deviate from international law obligations. The ICSID award in Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua has added a new layer to the developing case law on the interplay between essential security interests exceptions and the notion of self-judgment in the context of investment arbitration. …

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Time, Form, and Coalitions: Reflections on the 53rd Session of UNCITRAL Working Group III

February 13, 2026

The 53rd Session of UNCITRAL Working Group III (WGIII), held in mid-January 2026 in New York, marked another modest but revealing step in the long road toward reforming investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS). The meeting delivered some progress, particularly in clarifying what kind of legal instrument(s) might eventually emerge from the cluster of partially linked reform options grouped together for discussion…

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EU Sanctions and the Undoing of International Investment Arbitration

January 15, 2026

Sailing Yacht A in the Gulf of Trieste, seized in 2022 under the EU sanctions regime. It is well known that the EU has a complicated relationship with international investment arbitration. Whilst the two appear to be grounded in comparable commitments to a liberal international economic order, EU institutions have taken the view that investor-state dispute…

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Expropriation, Oil and the Prohibition on the Use of Force: Justification Narratives and the Effectiveness of International Law in the Venezuela Crisis

January 13, 2026

The US military intervention in Venezuela amounts to a manifest breach of the prohibition on the use of force under international law. Neither self-defence nor authorization by the UN Security Council can be invoked to justify the use of military force under these circumstances. The operation also clearly violates the principle of non-intervention, as it was explicitly aimed…

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