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112<br />

5.1 Foreign direct investment in bilateral investment treaties, regional free<br />

trade agreements and WTO agreements and its interaction with<br />

sectoral and horizontal topics under the rules of global free trade<br />

The answer to the question, why the existing, already widely market-compliant<br />

liberalized rules of national legislation and international treaties are still not sufficient,<br />

can be found in the interaction of foreign direct investment with<br />

• bilateral investment agreements,<br />

• regional free trade agreements and<br />

• the WTO<br />

with different complementary “sectoral” 319 bodies of rules and regulations concerning<br />

• services and<br />

• goods<br />

as well as the “horizontal” 320 topics of<br />

• investment and<br />

• the demands regarding the proposed internationally binding criteria for government<br />

procurement.<br />

The bilateral investment agreements, with their comprehensive investors’ rights,<br />

complement the vested rights of investors already determined by the WTO and/or<br />

FTAs. If a country grants certain concessions in the framework of a BIT, then according<br />

to the MFN clause, all other BITs of this country have to contain the same “best”<br />

conditions: A chain reaction, which as a results creates a multilateral investment<br />

agreement (MIA) through the backdoor: therefore, for example, the deputados of the<br />

Brazilian Congress should think twice and check if the consequences of ratifying a<br />

BIT really produce desired developments.<br />

The attempt to implement the consequent commercialization of public goods<br />

and services at an international cross-border level is tried through all kinds of thinkable<br />

measures: The regulations of international treaties are irreversible once the<br />

agreements are ratified, so that broad market access, “non-discrimination”, “national<br />

treatment”, international arbitration courts and the determination of companies as<br />

subject of international law with rights and duties as well as binding rules for public<br />

319 http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/sectoral/index_en.htm.<br />

320 Ibid.

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