Italy's Investment Treaty Practice and Case-Law: What Balance between Investors’ Protection and General Interests of States?

Since the mid 1960s Italy has concluded bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with almost 100 countries. In the last fifteen years, there have been in excess of twenty (known) international arbitrations brought under Italian BITs. The underlying aim of the chapter is to assess the balance between investment protection and the sovereign right to regulate in the public interest that Italian BITs have struck. Such assessment will be carried out on the basis of an analysis of the content and evolution of Italy’s investment treaty making over the last forty years as well as an examination of the way Italian treaties have been interpreted and applied by investment tribunals over the last two decades. The main findings of this chapter are as follows: while Italian BITs show some form of evolution in terms of scope of protection, the balance between investment protection and the sovereign right to regulate remains an open question as the interpretation of Italian BITs by arbitral tribunals settling disputes between Italian investors and a variety of host States has been influenced by the diverse and evolving arbitral case law relating to the broader world of investment treaties.