Decision in the Svea Court of Appeal, 19 May 2020. Case no. T 4658-18

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 submission to the Court on its own initiative and requested that the Court of Appeal set a time limit for the submission of written submissions. The Commission had further requested the court’s permission to present oral arguments 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). The Court of Appeal had previously rejected a similar request from the Kingdom of Spain.

The Court of Appeal decided to present the European Commission with the opportunity to submit written submissions by a certain date and noted that the European Commission’s right to submit such submissions 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 arguments 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 reject 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.