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ARBITRATION AND EU LAW – PRESENTATION AT THE CONFERENCE OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
15 December 2022
The Civil Law Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church organized an online conference with the title “Review of arbitral awards under European Law” on 15 November 2022. Among more outstanding Hungarian lawyers, our managing partner, Richárd Schmidt made a presentation on the conference.
Richard addressed the topic of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in relation with the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards within the EU delivered in other EU countries.
Although the “free movements of judgments” within the European Union is governed by the Brussels I Regulation, international arbitration is a special legal order, therefore the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards is governed by the New York Arbitration Convention of 1958, which takes precedence over the “Brussels Regime”.
Despite the fact, that the line of demarcation between these two legal orders seemed to be clear on the basis of the judgment of the CJEU in the Mark Rich Case (C-190/89), this line have become blurred by reason of the infamous judgment of the CJEU delivered in 2007 in the West Tankers case (C-185/07).
After summarizing the above, Richárd analysed the judgment of the CJEU in the Gazprom case (C-536/13), in which Lithuania tried to refuse the recognition of an arbitral award, delivered by an arbitral tribunal of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, by invoking the provisions of the Brussels I Regulation.
Even if Advocate General Wathelet invited the court to review its West Tankers jurisprudence and to clarify the relation of the two legal regimes, the Luxembourg Court finally took a neutral standpoint, taking the view that the question shall be answered in the light of national law.
Richard closed its presentation by forecasting severe collisions between international commercial arbitration and EU law, due to the absence of clear line of demarcation between these two legal regimes, by reason of the expansion of EU law.
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