Arbitration Team Coffee Break - July 2022

Events

Lawyers from DLA Piper’s Milan office participated in the Italian Arbitration Day (organized by Italian Association for Arbitration and Milan Chamber of Arbitration), which took place on 9 and 10 June 2022 in Rome.

The event, which focused on the reform of Italian arbitration law, featured some of the most renowned international arbitration practitioners, such as Massimo Benedettelli, Andrea Carlevaris and Pierre Tercier.

Various topics were addressed, such as the power for arbitrators to issue interim measures in relation to arbitration proceedings, the enforcement of arbitral awards and the arbitrators’ duty of disclosure.

Valerio Condemi took part in the event titled “Arbitrating Corporate Law Disputes in Italy,” moderated by Michele Sabatini, with Cecilia Carrara (Legance), Angelo Anglani (ADVANT Nctm) and Massimo Benedettelli (ArbLit) as speakers. The event covered topics such as the issuance of interim relief in corporate arbitration proceedings and the possibility to submit corporate disputes to the jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal (for a more specific analysis on this issue in Italy, you can also find the comment by our Matteo Ronchi and Davide Lagni about the 2020 Genoa Court of Appeal decision here. The speakers also pointed out that corporate arbitration proceedings in Italy and, in particular, those related to the challenge of the shareholders’ resolutions, are increasingly frequent and more rapid (the expected time to get a decision is around 110 days) than proceedings in others European countries.

News

Changes in the Energy Chartered Treaty

On 24 June 2022, at its ad hoc meeting, the Energy Charter Conference approved the public communication (available here) explaining the main changes contained in the agreement in principle on the modernization of the ECT. This revision is subject to adoption by the ECT conference in late November and ratification by the contracting parties.

In a nutshell:

• Investment protection for fossil fuels will no longer apply within the EU and UK, albeit with a ten-year grace period for existing investments (p. 3).
• Hydrogen is now explicitly covered by investment protection, together with anhydrous ammonia, biomass, biogas, synthetic fuels and additional energy-related equipment (p. 3).
• Intra-EU lawsuits are excluded (p. 7), thus codifying the Komstroy case law and more recently the Green Power against Spain, where for the first time ever an arbitral tribunal has upheld the state’s intra-EU jurisdiction objection.

Book reviews/Interviews

In April 2022 G. Giappichelli Editore published the Il riconoscimento degli effetti del giudicato nell'arbitrato commerciale internazionale, written by Michele Grassi (University of Milan, Italy).

According to the description of the book, taken from the publisher’s website, the study aims to investigate the functioning of the theory of res judicata in the context of international commercial arbitration and, therefore, the recognition within the arbitration procedure of the conformative and preclusive effect of decisions made by a different judge or arbitral tribunal.

More information on the book may be found here.

Good to know

Check out the article by Matteo Fumagalli about the reduction (from 12 to six months) of the long time limit to challenge the validity of an arbitral award, which is part of the reform of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure.