The Economist - UK (2019-06-29)

The EconomistJune 29th 2019 17

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Letters

Investment disputes in the EU

You appear to suggest that

American and Swiss investors

in central European member

states of the eumay be worse

off following a judgment by the

European Court of Justice in a

case concerning Achmea, a

Dutch insurer, and Slovakia

(“Treaty or rough treatment”,

June 8th). However, this is not

so, as that judgment only

concerns cases by euinvestors

against eumember states. In

such cases, the court held that

eulaw precludes arbitration

before international tribunals.

The judgment was issued in

March 2018. Since then more

than a dozen arbitral decisions

held that they were not bound

by that judgment. This includ-

ed a claim by Vattenfall, a

Swedish energy company,

against Germany over the

objections of that country,

which had argued that follow-

ing the judgment the tribunal

did not have jurisdiction. And

while the European Commis-

sion supported efforts to end

intra-eubilateral investment

treaties, ultimately all eu

countries undertook to

terminate these treaties by the

end of this year.

If the ecj judgment contrib-

utes to improving the func-

tioning of national court

systems in the eu, then the

long-term benefits will vastly

outweigh any perceived short-

comings in the near future.

Full disclosure: I was lead

counsel for Slovakia in the said

proceedings before the ecj.

markus burgstaller

Partner

Hogan Lovells International

London

You described the Internation-

al Centre for the Settlement of

Investment Disputes as “an

obscure court across the Atlan-

tic”. It is neither a court nor

across the Atlantic; icsidis an

arbitration institution admin-

istering hearings across the

globe. Nor is it the sole legal

framework for investment-

treaty disputes. A significant

portion of cases are heard

outside the icsidregime,

which makes disputes suscep-

tible to domestic court

supervision;theAchmeacase

isoneexampleofthis.More-

over,theevidenceisdecidedly

mixedona causallinkbetween

investmenttreatiesand

investmentflows.

joeldahlquistcullborg

UppsalaUniversity

Uppsala,Sweden

BuryingNewYork’spoor

“Potters’fields”(June15th),an

articleonburyingNewYork’s

poorandunclaimed,saidthat

thereisonlyspaceforeightto

tenmoreyearsattheCity

CemeteryonHartIsland.That

pertainstolandthathasnot

yetbeenused.Thecityhas

recycledcommongraveson

HartIslandfora longtime,

whichiswhyover1mbodies

havebeeninterredtheresince

1869 (privatecemeteriescan-

notreusegraves,butcommon

gravesinpubliccemeteriescan

bere-employed).Asa resultof

therecycling,whichbeganin

1933,HartIslandisnowthe

largestnaturalburialgroundin

theUnitedStatesandoffersa

sustainableandecological

solutionforburying

unclaimedbodies,asrequired

inNewYorkstate.

melindahunt

President

HartIslandProject

NewYork

Chile’s pension returns

Notwithstanding the concep-

tual and practical merits of the

Chilean pension system, there

is a serious problem that has

not received proper attention:

the risk-reward profile of the

investment options (“Will you

still feed me?”, June 8th). One

recent study showed that the

risk-return profile of Chilean

pension funds is completely at

odds with the regulator’s de-

sire. In short, the most conser-

vative investment option has

outperformed the most risk-

taking for most of the time.

Mexican pension funds,

however, over a similar time

period exhibited almost per-

fect risk-return profiles. The

reason? The Mexican regulator

incorporates the value-at-risk

metric; the Chilean one relies

only on asset-class limits.

Regulatorsoftheworld,be-

ware:youmightbecreatinga

monster.

arturocifuentes

Clapesuc/Santiago

bernardopagnoncelli

UniversidadAdolfoIbanez

Santiago,Chile

An English-speaking union?

Charlemagne thinks that

promoting English as the

European Union’s sole official

language would allow for “the

sort of unity that is only pos-

sible with a common tongue”

(June 15th). What is the evi-

dence for such a claim? Britain

and America share a common

language and yet the present

governments are far apart on

reaching a consensus in many

policy areas.

The euhas not needed to

promote a single official

language because the unique

form of monolingual ideology

that has taken hold in Western

Anglo nations is international-

ly atypical. Switzerland (an

example cited by Charle-

magne) does indeed have

German, French, Italian and

Rumantsch strongholds, but

official business can, and does,

take place in all four.

Perhaps if we as a society

were more understanding of

the benefits inherent in multi-

lingual operations, we would

not be experiencing a national

languages-skills gap that is

estimated by the British Acad-

emy to be costing the economy

£48bn ($61bn) a year.

jonathan kasstan

Lecturer in French and

linguistics

University of Westminster

London

alice corr

Department of Modern

Languages

University of Birmingham

(For a full list of signatories

please refer to our website.)

To Charlemagne’s observations

on the advantages of English in

Europe can be added the long-

standing acceptance by

Anglophones of different

groups who speak their lan-

guage in different ways. The

French and German languages

are shaped by academies and

committees that try to define

from the top down what is or is

not correct language. The

Anglophone tradition relishes

differences of region, register

and class as a semantic stratum

that conveys a wealth of mean-

ing, not about what is said but

about who is saying it.

In origin, English is simply

French spoken by Germans. Let

us look forward to a day when

Geordie, Scouse, Received

Pronunciation and Cockney

can hold out a hand in friend-

ship and understanding to

Europeans speaking fluent

Freutsch.

paul beardmore

London

Compact Latin

Latin is the parent of several

languages, as pointed out by

Johnson (June 8th), but none of

them has matched its compact

beauty. The gladiators’ greeting

as they entered the Coliseum:

“Morituri te salutant” (“Those

who are about to die salute

thee”) is but one memorable

phrase. An even more notable

example was “Speramus

meliora; resurget cineribus”

(“We hope for better things; it

will rise from the ashes”)—four

words replacing 11.

andrzej derkowski

Oakville, Canada

Political obliteration

To clarify Bagehot’s contention

that the Canadian conservative

party was “wiped out” in the

election of 1993 (June 15th), two

conservatives survived that

drubbing and were returned as

members of Parliament: Mrs

Elsie Wayne and Mr Jean

Charest. Some wag observed

the party was now an

endangered species and

perhaps faced extinction,

given it had been reduced to

but a single breeding pair.

william macgregor

Halifax, Canada