Discussion Paper

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New trends in international investment agreements: tracing the emergence of investment facilitation

Polanco, Rodrigo / Zoryana Olekseyuk / Axel Berger
Discussion Paper (13/2026)

Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

ISBN: 978-3-96021-299-7
DOI: https://doi.org/10.23661/idp13.2026

The focus of investment treaty-making has shifted from protecting foreign investors towards investment facilitation. Investment facilitation refers to policies that ease investment without granting investors special rights or legal protection. This study provides a comprehensive mapping and comparison of investment facilitation provisions across international investment agreements (IIAs), and evaluates their level of legalisation using the Investment Facilitation Index (IFI). Of the 4,037 IIAs with available texts as of August 2026, 102 explicitly reference “investment facilitation”. A few agreements, such as the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA), the EU–Angola Sustainable Investment Facilitation Agreement (SIFA), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Common Investment Code (CIC), the Brazilian cooperation and facilitation investment agreements (CFIAs) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Investment Protocol, stand out due to the breadth of measures they incorporate; these could serve as blueprints for future treaties. The data also suggest that although “normative” commitments are relatively well reflected in IIAs, notably on transparency and responsible business conduct, “functional” dimensions such as electronic governance and streamlined application processes remain under-represented. There is also a trade-off between breadth and bindingness: while, on average, almost 57 per cent of covered provisions are framed in mandatory terms, the most comprehensive treaties rely heavily on hortatory language, whereas narrower agreements often achieve higher levels of legalisation. Geopolitical tensions and rising economic security screening, however, limit multilateral buy-in and may constrain the effectiveness of investment facilitation. These findings could be helpful to policymakers and investment promotion agencies, who can gain an overview of existing investment facilitation measures and their bindingness in order to design treaties and reforms of national investment frameworks that turn commitments into effective outcomes.

Dr Rodrigo Polanco is a Titular Professor at the World Trade Institute (WTI), University of Bern and a legal adviser at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law.

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