April 20, 2016: The Hague District Court today set aside all three interim awards and all three final awards made in parallel arbitrations brought by claimants Yukos Universal Limited, Hulley Enterprises Limited and Veteran Petroleum Limited against the Russian Federation on the ground that the Tribunals lacked jurisdiction to hear the disputes. The seats of these arbitrations were at The Hague.
According to a Summary of the judgment on the Court’s website, the court reasoned that Article 45 of the Energy Charter Treaty necessitates an article-by-article examination of the ECT to determine whether each Article is contrary to the constitution or other legislation of the respondent state. On the facts of these disputes, they found that the Russian Federation was not bound by its provisional application of the ECT to the consent to arbitration in Article 26 of the Treaty. The Court’s web link above also contains an English translation of the judgment.