Fernando de Magalhães Furlan
No investor, small or big, private or public, will put his assets somewhere with too many risks, with no stability or predictability. Capital is a very suspicious creature. It needs to be carefully persuaded, nurtured and constantly reassured.
In relation to Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), a way to guarantee all those things is the employment of investment agreements.
The pillars of investment agreements are risk mitigation and institutional governance. The aim is to stimulate business through legal guarantees for investors, intergovernmental cooperation and dispute resolution.
International investment agreements deal with substantive provisions, that is, the rules that a foreign investment must comply with so that it can be admitted and have the right of establishment in the country that will receive that investment. In turn, the country receiving the investment must also comply with certain rules to guarantee protection, isonomy and impartial treatment of the foreign investment made.
Currently, there is no multilateral investment agreement, due to the complexity of negotiating the provisions of the agreement and the interests involved, despite the efforts made in this regard, mainly by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with the attempt to establish the Multilateral Agreement on Investments – MAI, between 1995 and 1998. This difficulty is mainly due to the divergence of objectives between investor countries (capital exporters) and investment recipient countries (capital importers) and the lack of trust between these countries in relation to the investment environment that involves the following factors: governance, credibility of public and private institutions, legal framework, sector regulation, economic environment, transparency, predictability, among others, which can be characterized as political risk from the country.
On the side of countries interested in investing, there is a concern to protect investments to be made in other countries, that is, they seek to adopt a definition of investment as comprehensive as possible, so that all their assets and rights are protected by the agreement.
On the side of the countries receiving the investments, there is a concern to attract investments that provide an increase in the production of goods and/or services, an increase in the offer of jobs and allow the transfer of technology or of new management forms, to guarantee the improvement of productivity. For these countries, a more restricted definition of investment would be the most appropriate and is generally linked to the definition of direct investment, that is, productive and lasting investment.
Although there is no multilateral trade agreement to date, there are several international investment agreements signed bilaterally and other regional ones. Therefore, there is no specific agreement model, but most agreements deal with investment protection devices in which, generally, the broader scope and definition of investment by investor countries (capital exporters) prevails, to the detriment of the definition of investment defended by the investment recipient countries (importers of capital), more restricted.
In addition to the question of the scope and definition to be adopted in an investment agreement, there are other devices that are as or more complex than this one, such as: expropriation, transfers (capital movement), prohibition of performance requirements, dispute settlement, National Treatment (equivalence of treatment for national and imported goods/services), Most Favored Nation (if a country lowers its tariffs for one trading partner, it must lower it for all trading partners) and the right to regulate, which is directly related to maintaining the political space of the State.
Brazilian ACFIs – Agreements on Cooperation and Facilitation of Investments
Brazil, based on international experiences from other countries and international organizations, developed the ACFIs, whose main objectives are:
i) improvement of institutional governance.
ii) creation of risk mitigation mechanisms and dispute prevention.
iii) elaboration of thematic agendas for cooperation and facilitation of investments.
The proposal includes important elements for a positive agenda (creation of the Joint Committee, Ombudsman for Direct Investments and Thematic Agenda) and regulatory aspects (principles of national treatment and most favored nation, terms for foreign exchange remittances, direct expropriation, compensation for losses, liability corporate social, State-State dispute settlement mechanism, among others) that seek to mitigate the risks of Brazilian companies that invest abroad and of foreign companies that invest in Brazil.
The Brazilian approach emphasizes mechanisms of prevention of disputes based on dialogue and bilateral consultations, prior to the establishment of an arbitration panel.
Fernando de Magalhães Furlan. Antigo Secretario-Executivo do Ministerio do Desenvolvi mento, Industria e Comercio Exterior (MDIC) e assessor especial da CAMEX. Foi presidente do Conselho de Administracao do BNDES e da BNDESPAR. Foi presidente, conselheiro e procurador-geral do CADE. Foi também diretor do Departamento de Defesa Comercial (DECOM) e chefe de gabinete do ministro do Desenvolvimento, Indústria e Comércio Exterior. Foi membro do Conselho de Administração da FINAME/BNDES. Atualmente e membro do grupo de especialistas do sistema de solução de controvérsias do MERCOSUL e consultor ad hoc de projetos de defesa da concorrência das Nações Unidas (UNCTAD). É professor de direito em Brasília e atua, como professor ou pesquisador, em universidades e institutos no Brasil e no exterior. É consultor externo ou membro não-governamental de organizações e institutos brasileiros e estrangeiros e consultorias. Graduado em Administração pela UDESC/ESAG e em Direito pela UnB, tem mestrado e doutorado pela Universidade de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), com pós-doutorado pela Universidade de Macau, China.