Small tensions: EU state aid and international investment law

Abstract

EU state aid law and international investment law seem to be inextricably contradictory, as recent practice suggests. EU state aid legislation does not regulate how it intends to deal with international investment protection issues - and vice versa. In bilateral investment protection treaties, the treatment of state aid in the broader sense is not regulated at all, inconsistently or even partially contradictorily. Therefore, potential conflicts seem to be unavoidable. There are substantive conflicts of judgements as well as procedural head-on collisions. In that process, a frequently raised question is whether European commercial law is being upset by international law - or the other way around. This contribution highlights the problems and areas of tensions currently existing.