LISBON ARBITRATION

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 ...

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’ ),...

… 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...