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Text, Commentary and Clarifications

Directorate for Financial,
Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs
Committee on international Investment
and Multinational Enterprises¹

31-Oct-2001, English -- Or. English

© Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -- Working Party on the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises

• Contents
• The OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises
  
• Implementation Procedures of the OECD for Multinational Enterprises
• About this document ...

The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises contain non-binding recommendations by governments to multinational enterprises operating in or from the 33 adhering countries -- the OECD members as well as Argentina, Brazil and Chile. They are complemented by implementation procedures whereby adhering governments agree to promote observance of the Guidelines.

The Guidelines are part of the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. The Declaration is a balanced framework of OECD instruments designed to improve the international investment climate and to strengthen the basis of mutual confidence between multinational enterprises and the societies in which they operate.

The present publication includes the text and implementation procedures of the Guidelines, along with the corresponding commentary and clarifications where they exist, presented chapter by chapter.

The commentaries were agreed during the 2000 Review of the Guidelines to provide information on and explanation of the Guidelines text and implementation procedures. They are not part of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. The paragraph numbers for these commentaries reproduce the numbering in the collection of Guidelines texts as reproduced in the ``OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises -- Revision 2000'' [www.oecd.org/daf/investment/guidelines/].

The clarifications provide interpretations of how certain provisions of the Guidelines should be understood as a result of deliberations by the Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises prior to the 2000 Review. These clarifications, however, do not modify the authoritative texts, which are found in the verbatim language of the Guidelines and the relevant decisions of the Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. To date, the implementation procedures have not been subject to clarifications.

The Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, of which the Guidelines are an integral part, is not reproduced in this document. For the complete collection of texts relevant to the Declaration, including all four constituent elements (National Treatment Instrument; general considerations and practical approaches to Conflicting Requirements imposed on multinational enterprises; a procedural decision on International Investment Incentives and Disincentives; and the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises) see the ``OECD Declaration and Decisions on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises -- Basic Texts''. This document and other relevant information can be found on the OECD website at www.oecd.org/daf/investment/.