Any day now, Italy expects to be ordered to hand millions of dollars over to an oil exploration corporation, following the Italian government’s decision to ban such exploration off its coast.
The ruling will be handed down not by a judge in anything approaching a normal Italian or European court, but rather by a secretive arbitration process open only to big business, with Italy having no right to appeal. These “corporate courts” stem back to the 1950s, created by rich countries and oil multinationals to protect Western interests against the decolonization sweeping the world at that time.
Italy’s decision to ban oil exploration came after Italians, fearing the impact of oil drilling off the beautiful Adriatic coast, protested in their thousands. They won. In December 2015, Italy’s parliament banned oil and gas projects within 20km (12 miles) of the coast.
That’s when British company Rockhopper, which has been exploring that same coast, sued Italy using an arbitration clause in a trade and investment agreement known as the “investor-state dispute settlement” or ISDS. The “compensation” being claimed totals about $350 million—seven times what the corporation invested in the exploration project.
— source aljazeera.com | Nick Dearden | Aug 2, 2021