Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the LLM in Transnational and European Commercial Law, Banking Law, Arbitration/Mediation at the International Hellenic University. With renewable energy being an overly important sector of today's economy, disputes arising out of it are inevitable. During the past few years a substantial body of case law has been formed from arbitral tribunals applying the Energy Charter Treaty on such investment disputes within the territory of the European Union. A review of this case law showcases important aspects of international investment law and its arbitrability within the European Union. Firstly, the most contemporary issue of international investment law arises, namely the conflict between legitimate expectations of investors with regards to the treatment of their investments by host States and the right of States to regulate without being bound by their previous behavior towards investors. Consequently, an extremely significant issue in the context of the European Union also derives from arbitrating such investment disputes, that is the ability of an arbitral tribunal to interpret and apply European law and ultimately the tribunal’s jurisdiction for resolving investment disputes between Member States; the Achmea Judgment of the CJEU had already provided some insight on this matter and was recently followed by the Komstroy Judgment that provided more answers from an EU Law perspective. The effect both above decisions of the CJEU may have on the applicability of the Energy Charter Treaty in intra-EU Investment Arbitration in practice remains to be seen. This dissertation thus aims to the extensive review of the aforementioned case law and the respective analysis of the relevant, mainly EU-related, issues it has created.