From conflict to coexistence ? The consolidation of the pluralist era for intra-EU investment arbitration

Conflicts between distinct legal systems, or ‘legal orders’ can be resolved in various ways: one legal order might insist on its primacy, or, alternatively, legal techniques and concepts can be invoked to leave each order to its own space—and mitigate the frictions when they collide. In the past decade, the Achmea saga from the Court of Justice of the European Union has attracted enormous attention, in part, because it is seen as the epitome of a hard clash between the law of the European Union and international investment law. In this article, we argue that this interpretation may be misguided, whereas a close reading of Achmea and the court’s subsequent judgments is compatible with an ordered pluralism that could, in the long run, leave room for harmonized ways for these regimes to co-exist.✦