This article examines Sustainable Investment Facilitation Agreements (SIFAs) as a new instrument in EU external investment policy. It argues that SIFAs have emerged from the legal and political constraints affecting the Union’s post-Lisbon investment-protection agenda. Opinion 2/15 of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) exposed that difficulty by confirming that portfolio investment and the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime are not covered by the Union’s exclusive competence. Using the EU–Angola SIFA as its main example, the article shows that SIFAs replace the classical treaty focus on substantive protection and direct investor remedies with transparency, administrative simplification, contact points, regulatory cooperation, and sustainable-development commitments. This facilitation model may be particularly valuable in developing-country contexts, where investment barriers often stem from opacity, delay, and fragmented administration. Yet SIFAs do not offer functional equivalence with traditional investment-protection agreements. Their benefits are structural and indirect in nature, thereby may generate free-rider externalities that benefit non-signatory third-country investors. The article therefore presents SIFAs as useful but incomplete instruments: they can improve investment governance, but they cannot replace enforceable investment protection.
European Investment Law and Arbitration Review