In recent decades, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become an extremely popular instrument of international investment law with the aim of promoting and protecting investments, providing investors with a high level of protection through substantive standards and arbitration clause, on which investors can rely for years after the termination of the BIT by means of a sunset clause. With the accession of candidate countries to the EU, in years 2004, 2007 and 2013, around 200 BITs became intra-EU BITs. Increased number of disputes, submitted to arbitral tribunals under intra-EU BITs, has led to a political and legal disputes between Member States, arbitral tribunals and the EC, as intra-EU BITs are supposed to become automatically invalid upon accession. A landmark decision was the Achmea judgment, where the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) ruled that the arbitration clause, included in the Dutch-Czechoslovak BIT, is incompatible with Articles 267 and 344 TFEU and cannot not serve as a valid legal basis for disputes under that BIT. Following the Achmea decision, EU Member States adopted the Agreement on the Termination of Bilateral Investment Treaties between EU Member States in 2020. The practice of arbitral tribunals and national courts, as well as the CJEU, has taken rational positions on the validity of intra-EU BITs and intra-EU BIT arbitration clauses. The focus of the Master's thesis is on the relationship between international investment law and EU law and the compatibility of the Agreement on the termination of Bilateral Investment Treaties between EU Member States with public international law. It analyses the effects of the consensual termination of the BIT on sunset clauses and the practice of arbitral tribunals. The Master's thesis also focuses on the potential protection of investor's rights within the EU, under certain public international law instruments and on the development of the current case law of the CJEU. The hypothesis of this Master's thesis is that an EU investor, who is investing in another EU Member State, despite the adoption of the CJEU's Achmea judgment and Agreement on the termination of Bilateral Investment Treaties between EU Member States, terminating the intra-EU BITs, is protected by sunset clause, which until its expiry provides the investor with protection of intra-EU BIT's substantive standards and arbitration clause.
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