Tomas Vail, a former White & Case lawyer who founded Vail Dispute Resolution in 2019, says Uniper’s claim “reflects the purpose of the ECT as agreed to by its contracting parties – to protect investors’ energy investments.”
“The idea that ‘alien forces are keeping us from reaching our full potential’ is seductive, but ultimately misleading,” he says, and it is “easier to point at external factors and demand leaders to ‘take back control’ by pulling out of the ECT than to look internally and address the inaction of states to encourage development in the renewables sector.”
Efforts to modernise the ECT “are to be applauded” and there are “undoubtedly legitimate concerns to address,” he says, but it’s not obvious that the right for investors to bring treaty claims is the obstacle to renewable energy investment that “many make it out to be.”
Originally published on gar.com