Case C‑536/13

‘Gazprom’ OAO

v

Lietuvos Respublika

(Request for a preliminary ruling
from the Lietuvos Aukščiausiasis Teismas)

(Reference for a preliminary ruling — Area of freedom, security and justice — Judicial cooperation in civil matters — Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 — Scope — Arbitration — Not included — Recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards — Order issued by an arbitral tribunal having its seat in a Member State — Order that proceedings not be brought or continued before a court of another Member State — Power of the courts of a Member State to refuse to recognise the arbitral award — New York Convention)

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber), 13 May 2015

Judicial cooperation in civil matters — Jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters — Regulation No 44/2001 — Scope — Matters excluded — Arbitration — Recognition and enforcement by a national court of an arbitral award prohibiting a party from bringing certain claims before a court of that Member State — Issue falling within the applicable national and international law

(Council Regulation No 44/2001)

Regulation No 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters must be interpreted as not precluding a court of a Member State from recognising and enforcing, or from refusing to recognise and enforce, an arbitral award prohibiting a party from bringing certain claims before a court of that Member State, since that regulation does not govern the recognition and enforcement, in a Member State, of an arbitral award issued by an arbitral tribunal in another Member State.

Proceedings for the recognition and enforcement of such an arbitral award are covered by the national and international law applicable in the Member State in which recognition and enforcement are sought, and not by Regulation No 44/2001.

Thus, any potential limitation of the power conferred upon a court of a Member State — before which a parallel action has been brought — to determine whether it has jurisdiction would result solely from the recognition and enforcement by a court of the same Member State of an arbitral award prohibiting a party from bringing certain claims before a court of that Member State, pursuant to the procedural law of that Member State and, as the case may be, the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, which govern this matter excluded from the scope of Regulation No 44/2001.

(see paras 41, 42, 44, operative part)