Where do hypothetical investment conflicts in the BRICS countries lead?

The article is devoted to the study of possible ways to develop investment law and investment arbitration in the BRICS member states. Based on the postulate of the crisis of globalism, the author predicts the construction of an economic order in the BRICS. One of the most significant elements of this order will be the investment system. Such a system should be based on a multilateral convention within the framework of the BRICS and the rejection of bilateral investment agreements. This is dictated by the needs of unification of key institutions of investment law: the concept of investment, investment activity, investor, recipient of investments, conditions for accepting investments, the system and standards of guarantees to the investor, the mechanism for protecting the rights of participants in investment relations. When forming the BRICS investment law, it is necessary to take into account the negative experience that the states of the world have acquired in the process of applying the Washington Convention, as well as the crisis that the investment law of the European Community is experiencing. One of the most serious problems that the BRICS member states will have to face is the objectively existing contradiction between the interests of the recipient states of investments and investors - private companies. This contradiction is due to the fact that the recipient State is the sovereign in international relations, while the investor, being a private person, does not have a public legal personality in international relations. This circumstance has formed the pro-investor ideology on which modern international investment law is based. However, this ideology has not stood the test of time. This is evidenced by the total criticism of the Washington Convention and the practice of its application. Investment arbitration occupies an important place among the BRICS legal mechanisms by which disagreements should be overcome and investment disputes resolved. The article concludes that the negative experience accumulated by investment arbitration, operating on the basis of the Washington Convention, can be overcome by abandoning the pro-investor ideology that prevails among arbitrators considering investment disputes. The article supports the initiative of St. Petersburg State University, which has developed the concept of investment arbitration, designed to consider investment disputes between the participants of the BRICS association. The article concludes that the idea of the BRICS investment future depends, firstly, on how successful the regulation of investment flows will be, concentrating the objectively existing confrontation between investors and recipients of investments and, secondly, on how the supranational jurisdictional body, which will be the BRICS investment arbitration, will be able to distance itself from the dominant in today's paradigm of the pro-investor ideology, which seems very attractive for stimulating investment activity, but has not found its satisfactory justification in history. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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