Paris Court of Appeal, 7 September 2021, Guinea v. Global Voice (RG No. 19/17531)

Back to school with a refresher on numerous principles applied by the Paris Court of Appeal in its review of international arbitration awards.In a case involving the Republic of Guinea, the Paris Court managed earlier this week to:

• remind that the parties’ choice of governing law does not circumvent the French substantive rule according to which – subject to overriding mandatory rules and public policy – the validity of an arbitration agreement is interpreted in accordance with the parties’ intention. A standard discussed at length in our review of the KFG decision (Paris Court of Appeal, 23 June 2020, RG 17/22943). The arbitration agreement included in an international contract has a specific validity and efficacy which requires its extension to persons that may not be explicitly designated as “parties” in the contract itself but have been, according to the will of the parties and the circumstances of the case, involved in the performance of the contract and may benefit from it.
• insist that, concerning allegations of corruption, the scope of the Court’s analysis is limited to the effects of the award and whether its enforcement can constitute a manifest, actual and concrete breach of French international public policy. The Court therefore refused to rule on allegations of corruption relating to a contractual amendment that had not been decided upon by the arbitral tribunal. Other allegations of corruption relating directly to the contract analysed by the arbitral tribunal were considered unconvincing in the case at hand.
• find, regarding the constitution of an arbitral tribunal, that where the parties provide for arbitration under the rules of an institution, those rules supersede domestic legislation with diverging provisions.

A link to the decision can be found here.