Facilitation 2.0: Investment and Trade in the Digital Age

In recent years, investment facilitation has taken an important place in the investment policy debate, with proposals to develop a multilateral framework to facilitate investment being debated in different fora, without achieving a consensus on whether these efforts should focus on implementing binding commitments or should be directed towards developing best practices and soft laws. This paper provides an overview on how investment facilitation is currently considered in international investment agreements (IIAs), including both bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and regional trade agreements (RTAs) with investment chapters, aimed at identifying common approaches that could serve as stepping stones for convergence across IIAs and between them and the multilateral trade system. This does not necessarily imply that similarities are the best or desired approaches, and this piece also identifies shortcomings in existing investment facilitation provisions.