LISBON ARBITRATION

[1] As is generally known, by the Achmea decision dated 6 March 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided that the arbitration clause included in the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) entered into between the Netherlands and the former Czechoslovakia in 1991 (Netherlands-SlovakiaBIT) is incompatible with European Union (EU) law. However, as it is also known, the relevance of this case goes well beyond its facts and the amounts in dispute. What were the practical...

The current pandemic, caused by SARS CoV-2 and COVID-19 (“ COVID-19 pandemic ” or “ pandemic ”), has had, and will likely continue to have, in the coming months, a very significant impact on several social and economic sectors, in particular, on the justice sector and on the activity of state courts and individuals that provide services in this sector, including lawyers, judges and arbitrators, as well as other entities, such as arbitral institutions. As regards arbitration in particu...

On 5 November 2019, the Macau Official Gazette announced the publication of Law no. 19/2019, the new arbitration law of the Macau SAR (“New Arbitration Law”). This legislation will come into force on 4 May 2020. The full text of the legislation can be found here . The New Arbitration Law replaces the current regime set out more than 20 years ago and introduces important amendments to the arbitration legal framework of Macau. The key changes in the New Arbitration Law include: 1. One sin...

It is widely accepted in the international arbitration community that arbitral tribunals may draw adverse inferences from a party’s failure to produce a document requested in the proceedings. As an example of that, the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration (“IBA Rules”) specifically recognize this possibility in Article 9.5. In this context, an adverse inference can be described as the presumption that an unproduced document is unfavourable to the interests of the p...

1.    Not rarely, in legal commentary dedicated to arbitration law (and, under its influence, in some courts’ decisions) one comes across the proposition that the court before which an arbitral award was challenged is “prohibited from examining the merits of the decision rendered by the arbitral tribunal”. In this article, we intend to show that this proposition is more mythological than real and cannot be accepted, if understood in accordance with the literal meaning of the words forming ...

Much has been said and written in the last couple of years about Artificial Intelligence and its possible impact in the legal practice. Experts seem, however, far from reaching a consensus on the effects that the so-called “next industrial revolution” may have on the legal business. Will lawyers be replaced by robots? What about arbitrators? Are traditional practitioners about to go on their Last Crusade? The term “Artificial Intelligence” is said to have been coined in 1956 when a compute...

Technology advances of the last decade have irreversibly changed the way we communicate, and international arbitration is no exception to this new reality. Although some of the possibilities allowed by the use of new technologies, such as virtual hearing rooms and the use of highly hyperlinked submissions, may still not be standard at this point – and, most importantly, may not suit or be cost-effective in all kinds of arbitral procedures –, it is already common practice between arb...

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has recently revised its Note to Parties and Arbitral Tribunals on the Conduct of the Arbitration under the ICC Rules of Arbitration (“Note”). The Note provides the users of ICC arbitration (including parties, arbitral tribunals and administrative secretaries) with useful, practical guidance on the conduct of arbitrations under the ICC Rules of Arbitration (last amended in 2017). Importantly, the new version of the Note applies to “all ICC a...

1.   Technological Wave Around 20 years ago, Richard Susskind predicted that lawyers would regularly use e-mails to communicate with clients [1] . Time proved him right. Thereafter, 10 years ago, the same author predicted that “the foundations of dispute resolution [would] be rocked by a combination of electronic disclosure, e-filing in the courts” [2] . Once again, time proved him right. He now predicts that new technologies are one of the main drivers of a big transformation in the lega...

According to most laws and regulations regarding arbitration, the parties may freely agree on the rules governing the proceedings and, in the absence of such agreement, the arbitral tribunal defines and conducts the arbitral proceedings under the rules that it considers appropriate [1] . The arbitral tribunal has, typically, broad discretion and room for flexibility when conducting the arbitral proceedings, within certain limits: firstly, the boundaries arising from the agreement of the...

After three years of debate, on 26 June 2018, in its 51 st annual session held in New York, Uncitral approved final drafts for a Convention on the Enforcement of Mediation Settlement Agreements (hereinafter “the Singapore Mediation Convention”) and for a Model Law on International Commercial Mediation and International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (hereinafter “the Mediation Model Law”). These drafts will be submitted to the Commission for adoption by the end of 2018 and onl...

On 29 August 2018 the Cour d’appel of Brussels rendered a decision that was widely reported as potentially causing an ‘earthquake’ in sports arbitration. Is that really the case? Analysing a dispute between, among others, Doyen Sports Investments Limited (“Doyen”) and the Belgian club ASBL Royal Football Clube Seraing United (“Seraing”) against FIFA, UEFA and La Union Royale Belge des Sociétés de Football Association ASBBL (“ASBL”), the Cour d’appel decided that the clause of arbitration...

If one had to name this year’s most groundbreaking decision regarding investment arbitration in Europe that would probably be the Achmea judgment, rendered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on March 6, 2018 [1] . And the year hasn’t even ended… In that judgment, the CJEU ruled that the arbitration clause contained in Article 8 of the bilateral investment treaty entered into by the Netherlands and the former Czechoslovakia in 1991 [2] (‘Netherlands-Slovakia BIT’ ),...

In Portugal, the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards are governed by the provisions of the New York Convention, treaties and conventions which are binding on the Portuguese State and articles 55 to 58 of the Portuguese Arbitration Law (PAL). Under article 55 of PAL, “Without prejudice to the mandatory provisions of the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, as well as to other treaties or conventions which are binding on the P...

Among other reputed arbitral institutions, Delos Dispute Resolution was founded back in 2014, and was introduced as an arbitral institution devoted to respond to the needs of businesses globally for time and cost efficiency in the resolution of disputes through arbitration. Considering that the seat of the arbitration is one of the most consequential aspects of this particular dispute resolution method, Delos intended to provide its users the information and tools necessary for a conscious...

Lisbon Arbitration was born with the ambition of being a major project for Morais Leitão, Galvão Teles, Soares da Silva e Associados (Morais Leitão), but also with the ambition of being yet another cog in the wheel of affirming Lisbon as one of the capitals of international arbitration. Recently, when negotiating an arbitration agreement, one of the largest companies of the Portuguese-speaking countries outside of Europe proposed to its North American counterpart that the seat of ar...

Mozambique has been witnessing a number of high-profile investments instrumental to the development of the country’s very significant natural resources, particularly coal and natural gas. The Nacala Corridor Railway and Port Project, sponsored by Brazilian mining company Vale to export coal from the Moatize coal mines, and the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Projects in the Rovuma Basin in the north of the country, by Anadarko and Eni/Exxon Mobil, deserve a special mention, even if at different s...

… saved! In a recent decision of 20 February 2018 [1], the Cour de droit civil of the Swiss federal court rejected an important and aggressive annulment request of the arbitral award of 9 March 2017 rendered, in the context of international arbitration, by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), in the case RFC Seraing v. FIFA, CAS 2016/A/4490. The basis for the annulment request was, among others, the lack of independence of the CAS’ arbitrators owing, according to the annulment requ...

1. Due to the fact that the 2011 Portuguese Arbitration Law (2011 PAL) has not provided – contrary to what the 1986 Portuguese Arbitration Law (1986 PAL) had done, in its Article 27(3) – on the manner how to handle, cumulatively, the annulment request of the arbitral award before the State courts and an appeal lodged against it (in cases where the parties had reserved in their arbitration agreement, the latter right of appeal), it is debated among Portuguese legal commentators how the int...