Impacts of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment

On 30 December 2020, after 35 rounds of talks over a seven-year period, China and the European Union (EU) held a virtual summit to announce that they had concluded in principle the negotiations for a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The CAI is an ambitious bilateral investment agreement covering diverse areas including market access, level playing field, sustainable development and dispute settlement. This report walk through the impact of the EU-China CAI on business development. Both sides are now working towards finalising the text of the agreement, which will need to be legally reviewed and translated before ratification. The agreement is likely to be officially passed in the first half of 2022.