Recently, in a decision issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union, in the case of Slovak Republic v. Achmea, intra-EU bilateral investment treaties’ (“BIT”) arbitration clauses were declared to be in violation of governing European Union (“EU”) law and therefore illegal. The court stated “that the arbitration clause in the BIT [between Slovakia and the…
Category: Developments
Inclusion of Emergency Arbitrations: A Step in the Right Direction?
The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“the Act”) provides for interim reliefs from both Courts and Arbitral tribunals. However, the latter has the authority to grant these reliefs only after its formation. Accordingly, both these procedures, under normal circumstances, have proved to be quite lengthy in nature. Thus, in order to provide urgent relief to the parties,…
Arbitration in Times of Restrained Social Relations Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
The year 2020 will be remembered in history as the year in which humanity faced the COVID-19 pandemic. It seems that it will remain our day-to-day concern for some time with devastating effects on the economies of developed and developing countries all around the world. Another consequence of the pandemic is that many domestic judicial…
India-Brazil BIT: A Step in the Right Direction
On January 26, 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was the chief guest during India’s 71st Republic Day Parade. Later that week a strategic partnership was formed between the countries as India signed a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with Brazil to further develop relations between the two states on both a cultural and commercial level. Recently,…
New Decade, New Demographic? Increasing Diversity in International Arbitration
Middle Eastern and African countries are no strangers to arbitration. The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) published in its 2020 Caseload Statistics showing that the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa together account for 26% of all cases. In its 2017 Special Focus on Africa Report, ICSID reported that 22% of…
