Arbitration and National Security Screening of Foreign Investment: A New 2026 Volume
Investment screening on national security grounds has moved from the margins of trade policy to the center of it. In 2026, the European Union's Council backed a major overhaul of the EU Foreign Investment Screening Regulation, expanding the categories of transactions subject to mandatory review and tightening coordination between member states — following the United States' own long-running expansion of CFIUS review and comparable regimes now in force across Asia-Pacific economies. Cross-border deals in semiconductors, ports, energy infrastructure, and critical minerals are being blocked, unwound, or conditioned on security grounds at a pace investment treaty drafters did not anticipate.
Arbitration of Disputes Related to National Security Screening of Foreign Investments, by Dr. Jens Hillebrand Pohl (Springer, European Yearbook of International Economic Law, Vol. 50, 2026), is the first monograph to work through how arbitral tribunals actually handle the resulting disputes. It maps the doctrinal tools tribunals reach for — treaty-specific security exceptions, the customary necessity defense, and jurisdictional thresholds triggered by screening decisions — and proposes concrete treaty-drafting reforms to reconcile investor protection with legitimate security review.
The book has direct application for three groups of readers. Investment arbitration counsel can use its award-by-award analysis to structure jurisdictional and merits arguments in screening-related claims. Government trade and investment-screening officials get a doctrinal map of how tribunals have tested security exceptions against the standards set in bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. And in-house counsel at multinational companies can use it to assess exposure before a cross-border transaction is blocked or unwound on national security grounds.
For law libraries serving international economic law and arbitration practice groups, this is a title that anticipates demand rather than following it: investment-screening litigation is a growth area, and a dedicated doctrinal treatment did not previously exist in a single volume. It belongs alongside the standard investment arbitration references on the shelves of law faculties, ministries of trade, and international arbitration chambers.
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Q&A
Can a country block a foreign investment on national security grounds without breaching its investment treaty obligations?
Whether a security-based screening decision breaches an investment treaty depends on the specific security exception or necessity defense the state can invoke and how a tribunal weighs the state's right to regulate against investor protection standards.
How do arbitral tribunals evaluate national-security defenses like CFIUS reviews or the EU FDI Screening Regulation in ISDS cases?
Tribunals typically assess whether the screening measure falls within a treaty's security exception or meets the customary necessity threshold, and the book traces how this analysis has been applied to CFIUS-style reviews and comparable regimes.
What is the difference between a security exception clause and a general necessity defense in investment treaties?
A security exception is a treaty-specific carve-out negotiated by the parties, while the necessity defense is a customary international law standard available even absent an express treaty clause.
How might investment treaties be redesigned to balance security screening with investor protection?
The book proposes specific treaty-drafting reforms intended to give states clearer authority to screen investments on security grounds while preserving predictable protection standards for investors.
Where can I buy Arbitration of Disputes Related to National Security Screening of Foreign Investments?
Arbitration of Disputes Related to National Security Screening of Foreign Investments by Jens Hillebrand Pohl is available now from CLNZ Books, Bookseller for Professionals Worldwide, with worldwide shipping and institutional invoicing available.