ISDS Case Map
Uruguay
Uruguayan Vice-President Danilo Astori said Mercosur must decisively address the signing of a free trade agreement with the United States, but also admits that “opportunities must be built”.
Philip Morris International (PMI) welcomed the decision by a World Bank arbitration tribunal to hear a claim that Uruguay violated multiple provisions of its Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with Switzerland.
Philip Morris International expects a decision to be made this month or next on a challenge by Uruguay as to whether an international tribunal set to hear bilateral investment treaty complaints has jurisdiction over the matter.
Uruguay faces its first hearings in the French capital this week in a lawsuit filed by US tobacco giant Philip Morris International against its anti-smoking laws, an official said on Monday.
Developing countries that have signed BITs should start a process of review and eventual renegotiation or denunciation, writes Carlos Correa
Uruguayan president Jose Mujica said that Mercosur “is not moving forward or backwards” but is certainly working much better than the European Union where old experienced nations “made a mess of it”. Nevertheless, Uruguay will not stay put “licking its wounds”, it will look for other trade links.
Philip Morris asserts that fair and equitable treatment includes a right to a “stable and predictable regulatory framework” as well as rights under treaties in addition to customary international law.
One of the world’s biggest tobacco companies is launching a claim against Uruguay for considering the country’s legislation commercially damaging to the company. Philip Morris corporation has filed a claim at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank branch.
Uruguay sees China as a ‘strategic partner’ and has kept good relations with Beijing since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in 1988, said Uruguayan Foreign Affairs minister Luis Almagro, a former ambassador to China from 2007-2009. Almagro made the statement as Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping begun his official visit to Uruguay.
Although in public former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner was supportive of Uruguay’s negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, members of his cabinet warned the US embassy in Buenos Aires that Argentina would block such an initiative in Mercosur, according to the contents of several Wikileaks cables published in Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
