By Thomas Granier | Published on 22 October 2026

I. The arbitration and the multiple ICSID proceedings

​A group of Italian investors (the companies Hydro S.r.l. and Construzioni S.r.l. and three natural persons) commenced ICSID arbitration against Albania on 10 June 2015. They relied on the bilateral investment treaty between Italy and Albania of 12 September 1991 and argued that Albania had expropriated their interests in Agon Channel, an Albanian television broadcaster.

The award dated 24 April 2019 ordered Albania to pay roughly EUR 99.5 million in damages plus costs (EUR 8,222,238.53 and USD 645,183.42) and interest at LIBOR + 3%, compounded quarterly.

Albania pursued several remedies within the ICSID system.

It submitted an annulment application before the competent ad hoc committee which was rejected on 2 April 2021.

It then submitted a first application for revision before an arbitral tribunal with a different composition as per Art. 51(3) of the ICSID Convention, which was rejected on 29 March 2023.

It submitted a second application for revision, based on allegedly newly discovered evidence of fraud. However, the ICSID Secretary-General refused to register that application on 17 September 2024. Given that it had been filed more than three years after the award was rendered, it was time-barred under Art. 51(2) of the ICSID Convention.

Albania thus commenced setting aside proceedings before the Paris Court of Appeal.

II. The parties’ submissions

A. Albania

On 17 October 2024, Albania filed applications before the Paris Court of Appeal under Arts. 1518 and 1519 of the French Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) to set aside the award, the annulment decision and the revision decision. It argued that Paris, designated as the place of proceedings in Procedural Order No. 1 of 27 January 2016, was equivalent to the “seat of arbitration” within the meaning of Art. 1518 CCP. It further argued that the three-year time limit in Art. 51(2) of the ICSID Convention and the Secretary-General’s refusal to register the second revision application together amounted to a denial of justice. In its view, this required a proportionality review under Arts. 6 and 13 ECHR and thereby opened the jurisdiction of the French courts.

B. The investors

The investors sought confirmation of the inadmissibility decision of the pre-trial judge (conseiller de mise en état) of 16 September 2025. They argued that the ICSID Convention categorically excludes any recourse to national courts against ICSID awards and that any intervention by a French court would contradict France’s obligations under public international law. A belated revision application does not amount to a denial of justice. Moreover, Albania had in fact exhausted the remedies available within the ICSID system, which shows that such remedies existed.

III. The Court of Appeal’s reasoning

​The Court of Appeal upheld the inadmissibility decision on four main grounds.

The ICSID system is fully delocalised and self-contained. By ratifying the ICSID Convention, the Contracting States (including both Albania and France) waived any national court remedy against ICSID awards. Art. 53 of the ICSID Convention establishes the binding effect of awards. Art. 54 obliges every Contracting State to recognise and enforce ICSID awards as if they were final judgments of its own courts.

The place of proceedings in the ICSID system is not akin to the “place of arbitration”. Unlike traditional commercial arbitration or non-ICSID investment arbitration, ICSID arbitration has no seat of arbitration in the legal sense. The ICSID Convention knows only the “place of proceedings” (Arts. 62 and 63), a purely logistical matter of procedural organisation without any legal effect. The ICSID comparison document submitted by Albania itself (Comparing ICSID Convention and ICSID-Administered UNCITRAL Arbitration) expressly distinguished between “Place of proceedings” and “Place of arbitration” and stated that the latter was “not applicable” in ICSID arbitration.

Art. 1518 of the French Code of Civil Proceedings opens the national court route for annulment applications only for awards rendered “in France”. This requires that there be a seat of the arbitration, a notion which does not apply in the ICSID system.

An alleged denial of justice does not create jurisdiction to review the valitidy of ICSID awards. Even if there were a denial of justice (a point which the Court of Appeal left open), this would not give French national courts jurisdiction to review an application for the setting aside of the ICSID award. Indeed, France is bound by the ICSID Convention which provides that setting aside applications concerning ICSID awards fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the ad hoc committee provided for under Art. 52(3) of the ICSID Convention. Moreover, Art. 53(1) indicates that awards are subject to no other appeal or remedy than those provided within the Convention. Any review of ICSID awards by French national courts would thus be contrary to France’s obligations under international law.

Lack of connecting factor to the French legal order. The dispute was foreign to France in every respect, and the place of proceedings created no legal link to the French jurisdiction.

IV. Takeaways

Predictability - ICSID arbitration is a self-contained system which provides for its own mechanisms to control the validity of awards rendered pursuant to the ICSID Convention. As a result, a procedural order designating Paris as the place of ICSID proceedings does not create a connecting legal factor allowing parties to the award to seek annulment of the ICSID award before the Paris Court of Appeal.

In making that finding, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed once more that it is very cautious about giving effect to the commitments issued by the State-parties to the ICSID Convention and to treaties in general.