Mr. Ambassador,
We, the undersigned, express our surprise at the announcement of an imminent signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Ecuador in the rst quarter of this year, given that the Investment chapter of this treaty includes international arbitration for the settlement of investor–state disputes (ISDS, for its acronym in English). Signing the treaty under these conditions would constitute a violation of the Constitution of Ecuador, which in Article 422 prohibits the ceding of legal sovereignty to international arbitration bodies in contractual or commercial disputes between the State and private natural or legal persons. Therefore, its enforcement would lack legal validity.
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