As a Contracting Party’s programmes which provide for public loans, grants, guarantees or insurance for facilitating trade or Investment abroad are not connected with Investment or related activities of Investors from other Contracting Parties in its Area, such programmes may be subject to constraints with respect to participation in them.

Canada and the United States each affirm that they will apply the provisions of Article 10 in accordance with the following considerations:

For the purposes of assessing the treatment which must be accorded to Investors of other Contracting Parties and their Investments, the circumstances will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. A comparison between the treatment accorded to Investors of one Contracting Party, or the Investments of Investors of one Contracting Party, and the Investments or Investors of another Contracting Party, is only valid if it is made between Investors and Investments in similar circumstances. In determining whether differential treatment of Investors or Investments is consistent with Article 10, two basic factors must be taken into account.

The first factor is the policy objectives of Contracting Parties in various fields insofar as they are consistent with the principles of non-discrimination set out in Article 10. Legitimate policy objectives may justify differential treatment of foreign Investors or their Investments in order to reflect a dissimilarity of relevant circumstances between those Investors and Investments and their domestic counterparts. For example, the objective of ensuring the integrity of a country’s financial system would justify reasonable prudential measures with respect to foreign Investors or Investments, where such measures would be unnecessary to ensure the attainment of the same objectives insofar as domestic Investors or Investments are concerned. Those foreign Investors or their Investments would thus not be “in similar circumstances” to domestic Investors or their Investments. Thus, even if such a measure accorded differential treatment, it would not be contrary to Article 10.

The second factor is the extent to which the measure is motivated by the fact that the relevant Investor or Investment is subject to foreign ownership or under foreign control. A measure aimed speciffcally at Investors because they are foreign, without su cient countervailing policy reasons consistent with the preceding paragraph, would be contrary to the principles of Article 10. The foreign Investor or Investment would be “in similar circumstances” to domestic Investors and their Investments, and the measure would be contrary to Article 10.

The reference to treaty obligations in the penultimate sentence of Article 10(1) does not include decisions taken by international organisations, even if they are legally binding, or treaties which entered into force before 1 January 1970.

I would like to note that the Russian Federation believes that the reference to international law in Article 10(1) is not intended to impose most favoured nation obligations with regard to Making of Investments. This is clearly in accordance with the intent of the negotiators who decided not to include in this first Treaty MFN obligations for the pre-investment stage.

The supplementary treaty will specify conditions for applying the Treatment described in Article 10(3). Those conditions will include, inter alia, provisions relating to the sale or other divestment of state assets (privatisation) and to the dismantling of monopolies (demonopolisation).

Contracting Parties may consider any connection between the provisions of Article 10(4) and Article 29(6).

The Russian Federation wishes to have reconsidered, in negotiations with regard to the supplementary treaty referred to in Article 10(4), the question of the importance of national legislation with respect to the issue of control as expressed in the Understanding to Article 1(6)

In addition, the Russian Federation has expressed the view that the consideration of appropriate amendments to the Treaty pursuant to Article 30 a ecting sectors of services within the scope of this Treaty to which measures of the GATS apply, and the negotiations towards the supplementary investment treaty provided for in Article 10(4), should be conducted in such a manner as to assure mutual consistency of the Treaty provisions arrived at. Here again, I am sure that all delegations would fully endorse the need to achieve such consistency in the future incorporation in the Treaty of the results of the Uruguay Round, and in negotiation of the second Treaty for the pre-investment stage.

The Russian Federation may require that companies with foreign participation obtain legislative approval for the leasing of federally-owned property, provided that the Russian Federation shall ensure without exception that this process is not applied in a manner which discriminates among Investments of Investors of other Contracting Parties.

Australia notes that the provisions of Articles 5 and 10(11) do not diminish its rights and obligations under the GATT, including as elaborated in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures, particularly with respect to the list of exceptions in Article 5(3), which it considers incomplete.

Australia further notes that it would not be appropriate for dispute settlement bodies established under the Treaty to give interpretations of GATT articles III and XI in the context of disputes between parties to the GATT or between an Investor of a party to the GATT and another party to the GATT. It considers that with respect to the application of Article 10(11) between an Investor and a party to the GATT, the only issue that can be considered under Article 26 is the issue of the awards of arbitration in the event that a GATT panel or the WTO dispute settlement body first establishes that a trade-related investment measure maintained by the Contracting Party is inconsistent with its obligations under the GATT or the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures.