LISBON ARBITRATION

Authorship: Ricardo Neto Galvão.   Arbitration affords countless advantages to parties relative to courts, including more relaxed rules, adaptability to the specific case and swifter proceedings. This explains why more and more arbitration agreements are being executed and why the use of this alternative dispute resolution mechanism is burgeoning. But this veritable “boom” of arbitral proceedings also brought certain existing doubts regarding the interpretation of existing laws to the fore. ...

Authorship: Fárima Dermawan.  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 Arbit...

Authorship: António Sampaio Caramelo.  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 l...

Authorship: João Lima Cluny.  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 decide...

Authorship: Carolina Pitta e Cunha.  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 ...

Authorship: Francisco Cortez.  … 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...

Authorship: António Sampaio Caramelo.  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...