Introduction

On 16 December 2003 an arbitral tribunal sitting in Stockholm ordered one of the republics of the former Soviet Union to pay compensation to a Western investor for violating provisions of the Energy Charter Treaty (the "ECT"). This is the first arbitral award rendered under this treaty. The case raised a number of important, interesting and complicated issues, which will be discussed below. Compared to the by now very large number of BIT-based arbitrations, and the equally impressive number of cases under Chapter XI of the NAFTA, the ECT has so far led to only few cases. AES v. ...