The topic of this seminar is Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitration Awards.

In order to enforce the rights conferred by arbitration award in the territory of certain state, a succesful party has to ask national court of that state for the recognition and thereafter enforcement of arbitration award.

So, arbitration award may be enforced only if it was previously recognised. The reason behind this is that the award must have a legal effect in the territory of the other state.

 The recognition proceedings are called as exequatur proceedings. The main effect of exequatur is that it acknowledges the existence of arbitration and recognises the decision of arbitrators.

There are, of course, certain reasons for non-recognition of arbitration award.

Those reasons may be:

• Applied by a court on its own motion
• Claimed by party
• Both of them.

The most important legal source in the field of recogintion and enforcement is New York Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitration Awards. The reasons for non.recognition must be interpreted restrictively and it is not permitted to examine arbitration award in the merits of a case ( so called au fond). Also, the reasons for non-recogition are exhaustive, therefore naitonal courts cannt add any reason thereto.

According to the Convention, the reasons for non-recongnition are twofold:

• Those which must be claimed by parties
• Those applied by court by its own motion.

Here are the reasons which must be claimed by party:

• The lack of arbitrability
• The lack of capacity of the parties to conclude a main contract
• The invalidity of arbitraiton contract.

Here are the main reasons which are applied by a court ex officio:

• The breach of a right to a fair hearing
• The lack of arbitrability
• Public policy.

Your task for this seminar is following:

Please go through the articles and study materials and try to learn something about Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitration Awards. We will discuss it after presentation.

The task for the GROUP 1 (Michal Reinöhl (325663), Pavel Stařičný (325936)

- please prepare a power point presentation about the topic of this lesson

Study materials:

Here you can find interesting material.

ROZEHNALOVÁ, Naděžda. Rozhodčí řízení v mezinárodním a vnitrostátním obchodním styku. 2. aktualiz. a rozš. vyd. Praha : ASPI, 2008. 386 s. ISBN 9788073573249