Investment Contracts

In the face of globalisation, investment relations have increased exponentially in the past decades. However, there are discrepancies about the interpretation of legal concepts relevant to international investment contracts and there is no international standard to guide the contractual relationship between States and private investors.
UNIDROIT has undertaken a joint project with the International Chamber of Commerce’s Institute of World Business Law (ICC Institute), with the aim of developing guidance to foster the modernisation and standardisation of International Investment Contracts (IICs). The project will explore the interaction between the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (UPICC) and common provisions in international investment contracts, and it will seek to address a number of recent developments in the area of international investment law, such as the increasing focus on corporate social responsibility and sustainability.

The Roma Tre – UNIDROIT Centre for Transnational Commercial Law and International Arbitration has constituted a Task Force to support UNIDROIT’s work on this project. The objectives of the Task Force are: (i) to gather published international investment contracts (including both contracts between States and foreign investors, and State entities and foreign investors), and (ii) to examine the available contracts with a view to identifying and providing an overview of main clauses, particularly (but not limited to) those under the umbrella of “change of circumstances” (such as stabilisation, hardship, force majeure, adaptation/renegotiation) and those which are connected with policy goals (such as sustainability, CSR, environment, social concerns and good governance, due diligence mechanisms). The final objective is to provide a sample possibly representative of current transnational practice in the field.