Decision in the Svea Court of Appeal, 9 October 2020. Case no. T 1626-19

The translation of the decision is provided by Mannheimer Swartling.

In a case regarding challenge to and invalidity of an arbitral award, the European Commission had notified Svea Court of Appeal of its intention to submit a written observation to the Court on its own initiative and requested that the Court of Appeal set a time limit for the submission of written observations. The Commission had also requested the court’s permission to present oral observations at forthcoming oral hearings in the case.

Further, the Kingdom of Spain had requested that the Court of Appeal request a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU) to, inter alia, clarify various issues of EU law in the case.

The Court of Appeal decided to present the European Commission with the opportunity to submit written observations by a certain date and noted that the European Commission’s right to submit written observations to a national court is not conditioned upon permission by the court. The Court of Appeal did not decide on the European Commission’s request to submit oral observation at forthcoming hearings since such observations may only be submitted at a main hearing and the Court of Appeal had yet to decide whether to hold a main hearing in the case. The Court of Appeal also decided to deny the Kingdom of Spain’s request for a preliminary ruling from the CJEU as the Court of Appeal did not consider that what had been presented in the case motivated a request for a preliminary ruling.