Techdirt has been writing about the dangers faced by nations that sign up to treaties containing corporate sovereignty clauses for some time now. These chapters are typically included in so-called trade agreements like TAFTA/TTIP and TPP — although they actually go far beyond regulating trade — but are also found elsewhere. For example the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) includes one, as Germany found to its cost when the Swedish company Vattenfall used the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism to claim €3.7 billion after the Germany state decided to phase out nuclear power stations — thus reducing Vattenfall‘s future profits. Now the ECT‘s corporate sovereignty chapter has struck again on an even more staggering scale: