On Oct. 15, 2019, the China-EU School of Law (CESL) hosted another event in the framework of the Open Lecture series. The audience of CESL students and faculty members were offered a lecture titled:EU Investment Protection under Construction: Current Development.The lecture was given by Dr. Stefan Mayr, a senior scientist at the Institute for Law and Governance at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria). CESL Assistant Professor Zurab Gvelesiani was the host of the lecture.

Dr. Mayr is a member of the CESL European Faculty and teaches the course ofLegal Foundations of EU Law and European Political Systems. Having worked in the field of international and EU trade and investment law for years, Dr. Mayr has selected a topic of his research interest for the Open Lecture. The hour-long presentation focused on the EU’s “new generation” of trade agreements, as well as the rulings and opinions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) about them.

Dr. Mayr started the discussion with the EU’s external competences and its limited ability to negotiate and sign international agreements. After analyzing the ECJ's Opinion 2/15 from 2017 about the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, Dr. Mayr addressed the widely discussedAchmeadecision from 2018, its implications on arbitral proceedings and significance in the context of the Energy Charter Treaty. The second half of the lecture was dedicated to the opinion given by the ECJ in 2019 about the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which similar to theAchmearuling has attracted tremendous academic interest and has been a subject of substantial discussion since its issuance. The Open Lecture ended with a Q&A session.

Written by: Prof.Zurab Gvelesiani