Enforcing Intra-EU Investment Arbitration Awards

Enforcing Intra-EU Investment Arbitration Awards – Latest Developments

Active

Program Number

33202

Program Date

2023-09-29

CLE Credits

This program will explore the latest developments in enforcing investment arbitration awards. By virtue of the Washington Convention, awards rendered in disputes between an investor and a State based on an investment treaty are enforceable in the US as if they were judgments rendered by a domestic court. In 2018, however, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU), the highest court on EU law, rendered its decision in the Achmea case, setting in motion a clash between EU law and international investment law. In that decision, the CJEU found that investment arbitration between an investor from one EU State, on one hand, and another EU State, on the other, is contrary to EU law. EU Member States have used the Achmea Decision to bypass the mandatory provisions of the Washington Convention claiming that no agreement to arbitrate exists in the first place. To date, they have had mixed success – leading to two conflicting decisions – both rendered by the DC District Court – in the NextEra and Blasket cases.

In this program, we will review the case law date in various jurisdictions and explore future directions for the enforcement of intra-EU investment arbitration awards.