Piero Bernardini in the arbitration Philip Morris International against Uruguay

The ICSID arbitral tribunal chaired by Prof. Piero Bernardini rejected the claim by multinational tobacco producer Philip Morris International against Uruguay.

Philip Morris filed an arbitration claim before the ICSID, following the alleged breach of the bilateral treaty between Switzerland (where one of the claimant’s branches has its headquarters) and Uruguay, when the latter adopted several measures banning tobacco producers from selling more than one variant of their products with the same brand as well as requiring health warnings to cover at least 80% of the packaging.

The arbitral tribunal – which included James Crawford and Gary Born besides Prof. Bernardini – ruled that such measures did not amount to discriminatory treatment under the bilateral treaty or to the expropriation of the producer’s brand pursuant to the investment treaty in force between Uruguay and Switzerland.