Abstract
Denial of benefits clauses are perceived as means that can provide protection from unwelcome treaty shopping in international investment law. However, a handful of application problems materialised when the investment tribunals deliberated on how the clauses operate.
As a result, not in all of the cases that the denial of benefit clause was invoked have the states been successful although the situation could have been interpreted as a clear example of treaty shopping. This is mainly due to the wording of the clauses or more precisely due to their gaps.
This paper will examine whether states succeeded to reflect those application problems raised during the decision-making process connected to the denial of benefits clauses in their newly concluded investment agreements, i.e. whether any lessons were learned from the evolvement of the interpretation problems of denial of benefits clauses.