Abstract

On 18 July 2014 an arbitral tribunal constituted according to the Energy Charter Treaty and under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules condemned Russia to pay a compensation of about 50 billions of dollars in favour of the foreign companies that owned the oil giant Yukos, due to the asserted illegal expropriation made by Russian authorities. This decision is of a major importance for the connection of several issues at the heart of the current debate on international investment law, such as the protection of sovereign prerogatives, the intersection with other international legal domains, the role of general principles of law.