INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS FOR THE PROTECTION OF FOREIGN INVESTOR

The article is devoted to the analysis of international agreements on questions of protection of foreign investments. The multilateral agreements are investigated in the indicated area. There is a detailed analysis of agreements concluded originally by the USSR and then by the Russian Federation. The author draws attention to the lack of a unified approach to the definition of the concept of “foreign investment”, which has evolved over time. It is argued that both national and foreign investments are an economic category and there is no single legal concept for them, similarly with respect to the definition of the term “an investor”. The guarantees to the foreign investors by virtue of bilateral international agreements on protection of foreign investments are investigated, in particular: most favored nation treatment, national treatment, payment obligation for compensation in case of nationalization, expropriation and other measures that have analogical characters, permission of disputes between an investor and a state accepting investment. The author comes to the conclusion that in international law there is no ordinary norm about investment disputes settlement by international commercial arbitration. The author analyzes changes to the Law of the Russian Federation of July 7, 1993 No. 5338-I on International Commercial Arbitration introduced as a result of the adoption of the Federal Law of December 29, 2015 No. 409-FZ. The article highlights the influence of state courts on the activities of international commercial arbitration, the expansion of the competence of international commercial arbitration and the filling of gaps in the 1993 Law on International Commercial Arbitration. The author believes that the expansion of the use of international commercial arbitration bodies ensures the creation of conditions to protect the interests of foreign investors.