Introduction On September 1, 2023, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress promulgated the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) Foreign State Immunity Law (“CFSIL”, bilingual version here). It will enter into force on January 1, 2024, together with the amended Chinese Civil Procedure Law 2023 (“CPL 2023”, English translation here). The new legislation not…
The second updated edition of the “Report on compliance with investment treaty awards by States” (the ‘Report’) has been recently released by the present author (see for coverage of the 2022 version of the report here). In light of the termination of intra-EU international investment agreements (IIAs), the failure to approve the modernized Energy Charter…
A recent ruling by the Chilean Supreme Court has clarified the extent of control that Chilean tribunals can exert when reviewing the procedural rules applied in arbitration awards seeking recognition in Chile (see Case N° 133.313-2022, dated 27 July 2023). Consistent with previous cases, the Court upheld a broad scope of freedom for parties to…
In 2013, Deutsche Telekom AG (“DT”), a German corporation, commenced an UNCITRAL arbitration in Switzerland under the Germany-India BIT claiming that India had (amongst other things) breached the fair and equitable treatment (“FET”) standard. In the arbitration, India raised various jurisdictional objections, which the Tribunal rejected in an Interim Award issued on 13 December 2017….
Enforcing awards against third parties is a perennial issue in international arbitration circles. In Air India Ltd c CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd, the Court of Appeal of Quebec considered an award creditor’s ability to seize assets belonging to an award debtor’s alter ego under Quebec law. This case offers significant insight for award creditors wishing to…
On 24 March 2023, the Metaverse Dispute Resolution Colloquium was organised by the Digital Law Center (University of Geneva), the Geneva Center for International Dispute Settlement (CIDS) and MetaverseLegal to explore selected legal issues arising from disputes in/about the metaverse. Previous contributions to this blog have explored metaverse-related issues here. After the introductory remarks by…
This post provides an analysis of 203 cases concerning the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in Mainland China between 2012 and 2022. Part I presented statistics on recognition and enforcement rates, the geographical distribution of applicants, the amount claimed, the time taken for rulings, respondents’ participation, and the sources of arbitral awards. It…
This two-part article provides an empirical analysis of hundreds of cases concerning the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in Mainland China between 2012 and 2022. In summary, the results show that, (1) on average, the courts of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) handled more than 20 applications per year and rendered rulings…
One of the reasons that parties opt in for arbitration instead of litigation as a mechanism to settle their disputes is that the recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award is easier to accomplish than the recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment rendered by a state court. The Netherlands has been a party to…
Securing a favourable arbitral award is not trivial. It involves a lot of work, a wait of, potentially, several years and the expense of the arbitral process. After all this, when a favourable award has, hopefully, been obtained, the last thing any client wants is to enter into yet another fight to enforce the award….
In June 2018, an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) tribunal issued an award against Spain under the Energy Charter Treaty. The successful claimants then commenced proceedings in Australia seeking recognition and enforcement under the ICSID Convention. Spain responded that it had not submitted to, and therefore had immunity from, the jurisdiction of…
A recent decision of the Hanoi People’s Court, Decision No. 12/2023/QD-PPT dated 4 July 2023 (“Decision 12”), held that a power-of-attorney (“POA”) signed outside of Vietnam and authorizing the signing and filing of an arbitration in Vietnam must have received consular authentication. In doing so, the Court clarifies the approach taken by the Ho Chi…
The recent reform of Italian arbitration law, which went into effect on 28 February 2023, has finally put an end to the historical prohibition for Italian-seated sole arbitrators and arbitral tribunals to grant interim measures. This ban was one of the most atypical features of Italian arbitration law (which is still found only in very…
The English High Court’s judgment in Infrastructure Services v Spain is one of the most important developments of the past year in relation to the enforcement of intra-EU investment awards. It arises out of the Luxembourgish and Dutch claimants’ successful ICSID arbitration against Spain under the Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”), in which the tribunal held…
Our previous post on this Blog explored the Polish post-award case law from 2020. We tried to answer whether Poland is an arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. And we concluded that out of the more than 200 proceedings we have been able to review, arbitral awards were set aside or refused enforcement / recognition only in a relatively…
On 28 February 2020, two Dutch investors obtained a favourable arbitral award against Spain. The tribunal found that Spain had violated the Energy Charter and ordered Spain to pay damages of EUR 15.4 million to AES Solar Energy Coöperatief U.A. (AES) and EUR 11.1 million to Ampere Equity Fund B.V. (AEF). Despite Spain’s attempts to…
As most other arbitration laws, section 86(3)(b) of the British Virgin Islands (“BVI”) Arbitration Act 2013 provides that enforcement of arbitration awards may be refused where “it would be contrary to public policy to enforce the award.” This provision mirrors Article V(2)(b) of the New York Convention 1958 and section 103(3) of the English Arbitration…
The Panel “The Future of Major Energy Projects Crises, Challenges, and Opportunities” took place on the penultimate day of the London International Disputes Week 2023 (“LIDW 2023”) on 18th May 2023 in the London office of McDermott Will & Emergy with panellist Armando Neris from McDermott Will & Emery, Lucian Ilie from Outer Temple Chambers,…
Although the COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted almost everywhere and in-person events have returned to full swing, Kyiv Arbitration Days 2022 (KAD), the most famous Ukrainian arbitration event, was still held online. The title of the conference – “After the war: The legal battles” – speaks for itself. While the war is still ongoing and…
This post addresses the recognition and enforcement of foreign awards in Colombia and summarizes two important cases decided in 2022 by the Civil Chamber of the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice (“Court”) on the matter. These cases illustrate the process of analysis undertaken by the Court to decide requests for recognition and enforcement of foreign…
“Crypto assets” are a relatively new phenomenon. Born in 2008 with the creation of Bitcoin, they have since massively increased in price, adoption rate, and popularity, at least until 2021, when the overall market value peaked. After such highs, we entered a “crypto winter” (explored on the blog here), with a reported drop of over…
This blog post covers UNCITRAL’s current work on adjudication, whose declared goal is to ensure enforcement of decisions concluding the adjudication procedure, especially in the context of cross-border, long-term projects. The post first gives an overview of the model clauses drafted by UNCITRAL, explaining the role played by the UNCITRAL Expedited Arbitration Rules (“Expedited Rules“)….
In a recent decision, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled on the enforceability of an investor-state award rendered under the ICSID Additional Facility Rules. While the Supreme Court found that the award was — in principle — enforceable under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards from 1958 (“NYC“), it upheld the…
On 24th of February 2022, the Russian Federation commenced a full-scale and open invasion of Ukraine after annexation of Crimea and eight years of hiding behind its puppet republics, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The main difference between the start of armed conflict in the Donbas region in 2014 and the start of…
