Do the changes in requirement determining the investor’s nationality serve as ground for states to make jurisdiction objections in investment arbitration?

Abstract

When an individual or legal entity applies to a dispute resolution tribunal and there has been a change in the applicant's nationality criteria, should the applicant be entitled to exercise investor rights or the state should be able to challenge the tribunal's jurisdiction. It is already clear from the formulation of the question that it is necessary to first define some basic concepts and answer a few sub-questions as well. Hence, in this paper, the first Chapter will discuss the concept of investor’s nationality: which factors play a role in determining the nationality, which law is applied, on which point of time of the life of the investment the applicant should have the relevant nationality, how the multi-nationality issues influence the situation, is effective nationality applicable in investor-state disputes, etc. Further, Chapter 2 will cover the cases where the investors have changed their nationality, that is, there has been a change in any of the criteria that is decisive in the process of determination of nationality and best efforts will be put to explain the consequences of such changes. Finally, the last Chapter will mostly be dedicated to summarizing the discussions and will end with the conclusions reached.