Legal Control and Protection of Foreign Investment – A Study of Expropriation

• Main Authors: Wei-Chung Lin, 林韋仲
• Other Authors: Meng-Bin Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86232067870404565785

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 法律所 === 97 === Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) plays a significant role in the global economic growth. Transnational investment activities could bring not only capital and technology but also employment to the host states. However, we could hardly ignore the negative effect it may give rise to. As a result, how to encourage and promote the FDI and regulate its drawbacks become crucial to the host states as well as to foreign investors. Among all the regulatory means, expropriation is the one which has the greatest impact to the foreign investors. For the host states, expropriation is an effective method to control foreign investment activities. For the foreign investors, however, to protect their property from expropriation would enhance the stability of international investment environment. Traditionally, the international law on expropriation is regarded as the component of the international minimum standard. From the nineteenth century, this set of rules began to face with challenges from developing states such as Calvo Doctrine, lump sum agreement and Doctrine of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources. In this circumstance, traditional rules no longer maintained its status as customary international law. However, with the demand of foreign capital to promote the economic growth, states took the initiatives to conclude bilateral and multilateral investment treaties to protect foreign investors from the late twentieth century. In addition, several international dispute settlement mechanisms were established to solve expropriation disputes. How could states strike a balance between legal control and protection of foreign investment and what is the recent development on expropriation in modern international law therefore become the objects this dissertation would like to discuss.