The questions for our seminar are as follows:

1- Are legal "standards" different to "rules"? How? What are the pros and cons of the use of legal standards instead of rules, and vice versa?

2. Which standards of investment protection can be identified? Please go through a BIT of your choice and try to find as many protections/claims of investors against the host host state as possible. 

3. What may be the particular difficulty for an investor in proving that the host state has violated minimum standard of treatment? 

4. Do standards of Investment and Investor protection always require the comparison between the treatment of the foreign investor and the host states' investors/entepreneurs? 

5. What is the purpose of most-favoured-nation clauses? Do they extend to dispute resolution provisions (arbitration clauses)?

6. What is the purpose of national treatment? What are the requirements to claim breach of this standard?

Compulsory reading that will help to answer the above questions is as follows: