he ICSID tribunal has settled its calendar: the hearing between Emmerson plc and the Kingdom of Morocco will run from 17 to 26 July 2028. The British company, which is suing the Kingdom under the bilateral investment treaty concluded with the United Kingdom, puts its claim at 1.215 billion dollars, the figure pleaded in its memorial of March 2026 and confirmed in its regulatory announcement of 25 August. The dispute concerns the Khemisset potash project, whose environmental impact assessment ran in October 2024 into an unfavorable opinion from the unified regional investment commission of Rabat-Sale-Kenitra. Morocco had asked the tribunal to rule first on its jurisdiction; it refused on 17 July 2026 and joined the objections to the merits.
The calendar says the rest: a Moroccan counter-memorial in January 2027, the claimant’s reply in October 2027, a rejoinder in January 2028. The Kingdom, in other words, has not yet written its defense on the merits, and the only public position it is known to have taken lies in a jurisdictional objection that failed. The file nonetheless raises a question the country will meet more and more often: how far can a state refuse an environmental permit before that refusal becomes, in the eyes of an arbitral tribunal, an indirect expropriation? Khemisset lies in a country that counts its water. It was on the project’s water consumption that the unfavorable opinion rested, and it is there, in July 2028, that the border between regulatory sovereignty and investor protection will be judged.
Photo: Delpha, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Emmerson plc — regulatory announcement on the arbitration calendar, 25 August 2026.
ICSID — case no. ARB/25/22, public register of proceedings.
