Paris Court of Appeal grants exequatur to final award, rejects stay of enforcement but stays set-aside proceedings

In Ustay Yapi Taahhut ve Ticaret AS v Libya (No RG 24/06372), the Paris Court of Appeal granted exequatur to a final award, holding that none of Libya's objections disclosed a manifest breach of international public policy. While it rejected a stay of enforcement, the court stayed set-aside proceedings concerning the final award due to a pending challenge to a prior partial award.

The Paris Court of Appeal (COA) has considered a request by Libya to set aside a final award rendered under the ICC Rules pursuant to the Turkey-Libya bilateral investment treaty. The COA addressed three procedural issues:

• The granting of exequatur to the final award, which was requested by Ustay.
• Libya's request to stay enforcement of that award.
• Libya's request to stay the set-aside proceedings pending the outcome of a remanded challenge against a prior partial award on jurisdiction.

The COA recalled that under articles 1514 and 1521 of the French Code of Civil Procedure (CCP), an award must be granted exequatur unless its recognition or enforcement is manifestly contrary to international public policy. Applying this standard, the COA rejected Libya's objections based on alleged violations of due process, alleged fraud in the award of the project that was at the centre of the arbitral dispute, and an alleged inconsistency with a Libyan court judgment annulling a settlement agreement.
The COA found that none of these alleged defects resulted in a manifest breach of international public policy, which must be discernible from a mere reading of the award. Therefore, exequatur was granted.

The COA also rejected Libya's request to stay the enforcement of the award under article 1526 of the CCP. According to the COA, Libya failed to establish that the enforcement of the award would result in a serious harm to its rights. It noted that its reliance on the existence of international sanctions against Libya was not substantiated by any concrete financial or factual evidence that would allow the COA to assess the impact of the enforcement of the award on Libya's situation and rights.

Finally, the COA relied on article 378 of the CCP to grant Libya's request to stay the set-aside proceedings concerning that same final award. It found that the fate of this award depends on the pending challenges to the partial award on jurisdiction before a remanded COA, following the decision of the Court of Cassation overruling the COA's previous decision to uphold the partial award. If the partial award ends up being annulled, so would the final award. Therefore, in the interest of the proper administration of justice, the COA stayed the annulment proceedings until the jurisdictional issue is definitively resolved.

Case: Ustay Yapi Taahhut ve Ticaret AS v Libya, Paris Court of Appeal (No RG 24/06372) (15 January 2026) (in French language).

Reproduced from Practical Law with the permission of the publishers (link to the article).

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