The recent Portuguese Voluntary Arbitration Law, which has been in force since 14 March 2012, (English version available here), was received with great enthusiasm amongst the legal community, which claimed for a new arbitration law that could bring to Portugal a regulatory framework closer to the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. The goal…

Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2012 (published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 20 December 2012) implements a new, recast version of the Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in…

Two major events have taken place recently regarding the situation of Bilateral Investment Treaties concluded between European Member States (“Intra-EU BITs”) and Bilateral Investment Treaties concluded between an European Member State and a State not Member of the EU (“Extra-EU BITs”). The fate of these agreements was surrounded up until now by a veil of…

On a recent brief holiday in Valencia, I was able to attend a session of the Tribunal de las Aguas de la Vega de Valencia, the “Water Court” or Tribunal de les Aigües, in Valenciano dialect used by that Court. The Tribunal convenes in public at noon every Thursday at the “Door of the Apostles”…

With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009, control of foreign direct investment became an exclusive area of EU competence, or such is the view of the European Commission, a view which is not shared by all EU member States. Since that time, the Commission has embarked upon what it…

This post follows on from the highly informative Kluwer Arbitration Blog post by Elizabeth Kantor, “The ‘West Tankers’ Saga Continues: Can Damages Compensate for Breach of an Arbitration Clause?” Whilst that focussed principally on the implications for, and efficacy of, the type of award in issue the purpose this post is, in contrast, to look…

In the most recent of a long-running series of decisions in the West Tankers saga, the English court has found that the majority of the tribunal was wrong to decline jurisdiction to award equitable damages or to declare a party liable to indemnify the other as a result of the breach of an arbitration clause….

The new Portuguese arbitration law that shall enter into force on 14 March 2012 represents a remarkable evolution in the arbitration framework in Portugal. The former Portuguese arbitration law was published in 1986 (not following the UNCITRAL Model Law) and despite being considered a progressive law at the time it was clear that it lacked…

This is an update on the post of 27 January 2012 dealing with the African Fertilisers decision. Last week, the English Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in the latest episode of the West Tankers dispute, upholding the first instance decision and approving the decision of the Commercial Court in African Fertilisers. The decision…

In a decision rendered on 2 November 2011, the Reims Court of Appeal annulled an ICC Award for failure to disclose conflict of interest during proceedings, irrespective of the ICC Rules on challenging arbitrators in the case Avax v. Technimont.1)CA Reims, 2 Novembre 2011, n°. 10/02888 This post considers the latest instalment, the Reims Court…

According to the rules governing domestic arbitration (Art 30 of the Concordat on Arbitration, and, as of 1 January 2011, Art. 378 of the Swiss Federal Code on Civil Procedure), a party that does not pay its share of the advance on the arbitration costs requested by the arbitral tribunal risks to lose the benefit…

Introduction: Many international commercial contracts (such as e.g., construction, distribution, sale and purchase) are governed by Swiss (substantive) law as per a choice of law provision. Often the choice of law is made in combination with an arbitration clause referring disputes to arbitration in Switzerland. The effect of international sanctions on commercial contracts has become…

Sports arbitration is becoming an increasingly important field. In Switzerland, where the Court for Arbitration for Sports is located, the Swiss Supreme Court is seeing lately nearly half of its cases coming from the CAS. Sports arbitration, however, gives rise to a specific concern with respect to the issue of consent. Often, athletes find themselves…

The new French arbitration law, published on 14 January 2011, further reinforces Paris’ position as a leading arbitration centre. The new law, which comes thirty years after the previous 1980 law regarding domestic arbitration and the 1981 law dealing with international arbitration, maintains the distinction between domestic and international arbitration. It clarifies and enhances an…

Last year, around this time, I offered a list of 10 investor-state arbitral awards I hoped to see in 2010. If time permits, I may do another list for 2011. But, first I thought I’d take a look back at last year’s list and offer a brief update on those cases. Rather, than do all…

Within the last two decades, over 30 new states emerged within the international community. From a political, economic, as well as a legal point of view, the formation of a state is always an expedition into unchartered waters. On a domestic level, the establishment of a sound legal system is the prerequisite for a stable…

The European Convention on International Commercial Arbitration 1961 (ECICA) is a multilateral treaty regulating certain aspects of international arbitral proceedings. Some of its provisions cover issues also governed by the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958, also known as the New York Convention (NYC), which was concluded three years earlier…

The Supreme Court of Greece, further to its recent ruling in favor of enforcing international arbitral awards in Greece, issued a second ruling in favor of international ADR. In a recent decision, the Supreme Court found that a major dispute deriving from a contract which contained an arbitration clause with a clear reference to ICC…

In a recent contribution to this list serve Alexis Mourre vigorously defended the parties’ right to appoint their own arbitrator. The appointment of an arbitrator is probably one of the single most important decisions during an arbitration. In so far it is not surprising that the right to appoint ones own arbitrator is regularly mentioned…

The growing success of investment arbitration may collide with the European Commission’s attitude towards intra-EU BITs, as shown recently by a development reported in August 2010 (the IA Reporter, August 5, 2010, Vol. 3, No. 12) regarding the Eureko v. Slovakia arbitration. In this case, Eureko initiated a claim against the Slovak Republic based on…

The discussion on the position of arbitration in the Brussels Jurisdiction and Enforcement Regulation (Regulation 44/ 2001) has now reached the Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament. Just to remind those less familiar with the issue: the present Regulation, as well as the preceding Jurisdiction Convention, allowed courts in EU countries to assume…

When discussing public policy, English lawyers like to quote the famous comment of an English judge in the early 19th century that “public policy is a very unruly horse, and once you get astride it you never know where it will carry you”. Recent history shows how difficult it is to ride the ‘unruly horse’;…

Having had their wings clipped by the European Court of Justice in West Tankers, the English courts have recently confirmed that there is life in the anti-suit injunction yet. In AES UST-Kamenogorsk Hydropower Plant LLP v UST-Kamenogorsk Hydropower Plant JSC [2010] EWHC 772 (Comm), Burton J granted anti-suit relief to restrain litigation in Kazakhstan even…