GesRZ-Spezial Aktuelle Praxisthemen im Unternehmensrecht und im Schiedsverfahren - Festheft für Günther Horvath

How an Unjustified Refusal to Enforce an International Arbitral Award Can Breach the European Convention on Human Rights

Willibald Plesser / Eric Leikin / Sofia Svinkovskaya

State’s refusal to enforce an international arbitral award in accordance with the New York Convention and domestic law constitutes a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols.

I. Overview

Since its establishment in 1959, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) has been tasked with the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) amongst the contracting states, ensuring the existence of a functioning judicial system and upholding the rule of law. As arbitration is recognised to be part of this judicial system through international treaties and national legislation designed and relied upon to ensure the efficient enforcement of arbitral awards, the Court periodically considers the applications related to the states’ treatment of the arbitral awards.

On June 30^th, 2022, the Court handed down its most recent arbitration-related judgment in the case of BTS HOLDING a.s. v. Slovakia, ruling that the unlawful refusal of the domestic courts to enforce an inter...