On 6 March 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in the case no. C‑284/16 Slovak Republic v. Achmea BV (“Achmea case”) (available here) stated that arbitration agreements concluded between the Member States of the European Union (“EU”) in the so-called intra-EU BITs have an adverse effect on the autonomy of EU…
On 6 March 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the “CJEU“) delivered its ruling in the case of Slovak Republic v Achmea (“Achmea“), holding that the investor-state arbitration provisions in a bilateral investment treaty (“BIT“) between the Netherlands and the Slovak Republic are invalid, as they are incompatible with EU law. In…
The theme of this year’s ICCA Congress is ‘Evolution and Adaptation: The Future of International Arbitration.’ Central to this theme was the topic of the First Plenary Session -‘Law-Making in International Arbitration: What Legitimacy Challenges Lie Ahead?’ The timing of such a discussion is apt given the Court of Justice of the European Union’s decision…
On March 6, 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in its 12-page judgment backed the Commission in its grid to finally scrap the intra-EU BITs and defied Advocate General’s attempt to preserve the system. The purpose of this note is to concisely analyze this far-reaching judgment of the CJEU against the…
Many arbitration lawyers’ initial reaction to the CJEU’s Achmea judgment resembles the first three of the famous “five stages of grief” (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance). Some deny Achmea’s relevance under international law, others angrily dismiss it as unreasoned and politically motivated, while many attempts to “bargain” a way out for intra-EU arbitrations under…
There has been much comment about recent awards in Energy Charter Treaty (‘ECT’) arbitrations concerning investors’ claims against Spain and other EU states regarding renewable energy projects . The fortunes of investors and states have waxed and waned over the last few years, but overall it seemed that investors faced a considerable hurdle. In recent…
The Achmea judgment, passed on the 6th of March 2018, and addressed in the Kluwer blog posts available here and here, prompted us to think about what could be the way forward for an effective investment and investor protection within the EU. Now that the CJEU decided that investment treaty arbitration based on intra-EU BITs…
Introduction In a much anticipated judgment in Slovak Republic v. Achmea B.V. (Case C-284/16), the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) ruled yesterday that the arbitration clause contained in Article 8 of the 1991 Netherlands-Slovakia BIT (the “BIT”) has an adverse effect on the autonomy of EU law, and is therefore incompatible with…
The Opinion delivered on 19 September 2017 by Advocate General Wathelet in the case C-284/16 Achmea has already been widely commented on in the international arbitration community. The views are either critical or approving, but so far, they have mostly been focused on whether a particular legal point made by the Advocate General was right…
I. Introduction On 19 September 2017 the Advocate General (AG) to the Court of Justice to the European Union (CJEU) Melchior Wathelet delivered his long-awaited Opinion in Case C-284/16 Slowakische Republik v Achmea BV. As already explained in another post, Bundesgerichtshof (“German Federal Court of Justice”) requested a preliminary ruling from the CJEU on the…
