Research Associate Professor N. Jansen Calamita and Postdoctoral Fellow Charalampos Giannakopoulos took part in the resumed 40^th session of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s (UNCITRAL) Working Group III, representing CIL in its position as an official observer. The session took place online from UNCITRAL’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

The Working Group brings together more than 200 government officials, UN officials and non-state organisations, with a mandate to identify concerns raised by the current mechanisms for resolving investor-State disputes, discuss the desirability of reform, and propose relevant solutions.

During the resumed 40^th session, discussions focused on the development and adoption of a revised workplan for the Working Group’s negotiations going forward and until the expected end-date of the investor-State dispute settlement reform project in 2026. A number of issues were discussed in this respect, including: (i) achieving the best balance in the division of labour, time and resources among negotiating the various reform proposals; (ii) identifying effective ways of finalising specific reform proposals for which consensus has already been achieved or is likely to be achieved in the near future; (iii) finding ways to mitigate against limited human and technological resources that may hinder the effectiveness of negotiations going forward in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.