Cologne Court Diverges from Berlin Court Judgment on the Admissibility of Intra-EU ICSID Arbitration Proceedings
- 09/11/2022
- News
In a judgment published in October 2022, the Higher Regional Court of Cologne (Germany), held that ICSID arbitration proceedings based on the Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”) and brought by RWE, a German energy company, against an EU Member State (“intra-EU arbitration”) are inadmissible under section 1032(2) of the German Code of Civil Procedure (“ZPO”). The Cologne Court applied the caselaw of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in Cases C-284/16 Achmea, C-741/19, Komstroy and C-109/20 PL Holdings but diverged from an earlier judgment of the Berlin Court of Appeal.