The last four months of 2015 have been significant for the design of future investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), at least as far as political will goes for the European Union’s (EU) international investment policy. The European Commission’s May 2015 concept paper on ‘Investment in TTIP and beyond – the path for reform’ publicly expressed the…
Michael P. Daly is a Visiting Scholar at George Washington Law School and Legal Adviser to Charles N. Brower and Jawad Ahmad is a Legal Adviser at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal. The views expressed in this post are the authors’ alone. On 2 December 2015 after more than three years of negotiations, the European…
A ruling of the Austrian Supreme Court, the Oberste Gerichtshof in Vienna, Austria, of earlier this year (see ruling of 18 February 2015, 2 Ob 22/14w) raises anew the much debated question of the type and intensity of supervisory court review of European Union (EU) competition law awards. Readers may recall that EU competition law…
At the CIARB’s London centenary conference earlier this month, the Honourable Chief Justice of Singapore, Sundaresh Menon, cautioned that: “we should remain mindful that there is no place for complacency or reason to assume that [the] international system of dispute resolution which so many have invested so much in, will continue on its recent trajectory…
Ever since the EU started to develop its investment policy, anti-ISDS groups started an unprecedented campaign. Indeed, on the very same day (7 July 2010) the European Commission published its first Communication on the EU’s investment policy, the anti-ISDS groups had a 100 page publication ready calling for the dismantling of international investment arbitration. Since…
‘By putting its head in the sand, the ostrich can see no problems, and if it can’t see any problems, they don’t exist”[1] To what extent can legal systems differ? Can these differences be legitimate enough to collapse a “conflictive” legal system? These two ambitious questions are difficult to be answered in one go, and…
The Higher Regional Court Frankfurt (OLG Frankfurt) has recently strengthened the efficiency of parties’ wills embodied in arbitration agreements. In a crucial decision (OLG Frankfurt am Main, 26 Sch 3/13, Ruling, 18 December 2014), the judges have added clarity to the practical problem of how to resolve friction between an increasingly dense net of treaty…
The Pechstein decision of the Munich Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) of January 15, 2015 has made headlines (see here and here). The Munich court refused to recognise an arbitral award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), since it held the underlying arbitration agreement between Claudia Pechstein, the speed skater, and her sport’s governing…
The Inaugural Conference of the European Federation for Investment Law and Arbitration (EFILA) took place on Friday, 23 January 2015, in the Senate House of the Queen Mary University of London. 160 participants ranging from academics, arbitrators, arbitration institutions, companies, lawyers to NGOs reviewed a full day long the EU’s first 5 years of European…
Numerous commentators have reported on the sanctions war in the past. What remains to see is how the sanctions war affects the Russia-related arbitration geography. On 8 September 2014, the European Union introduced a new set of sanctions on major Russian companies and wealthy individuals. The sanctions came following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its…
A team at the Brunel Centre for the Study of Arbitration and Cross-Border Investment, led by Tony Cole, has been requested by the European Parliament to undertake a study on the law and practice of arbitration in the European Union and Switzerland under contract IP/C/JURI/IC/2013047. The study concerns arbitration in all its forms, including international…
A number of decisions of various national courts have dealt with the issue whether a competition law dispute may be referred to arbitration. Although the case law tends to favour a positive answer, it is still an issue that is being continuously brought up in litigation as an easy way out of arbitration clauses. This…
Investment arbitration under investment treaties between EU member states is a hot topic, in particular given the EU Commission’s strong views on the subject: As previously discussed here, the Commission has intervened in arbitrations in support of the position that the arbitral tribunal lacked jurisdiction to hear the dispute. One such matter was Eureko v….
By Alessandro Villani and Manuela Caccialanza One of the more debated issues in the process of the implementation and review of Regulation No. 44/2001 (“Brussels Regulation”) was the general exclusion of arbitration from the matters covered by the Brussels Regulation. The debate about the opportunity to mitigate such exclusion arises from the subsequent difficulty 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…
One purpose for anti-suit injunctions is to stop parallel proceedings, that is, to stop parties from pursuing litigation or arbitration involving the same parties and the same claims in two different jurisdictions simultaneously. To stop parallel proceedings in arbitration, a party will go to the court at the seat of the arbitration and will ask…
In July this year, the European Commission published its communication “Towards a comprehensive European international investment policy” (COM(2010) 343 final) and a draft Regulation “establishing transitional arrangements for bilateral investment agreements between Member States and third countries” (2010/0197 (COD)). This initiative is based on the still controversial change brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, by…
