[A]rt. 1213 § 1 of the Polish Civil Procedure Code is a lex specialis (special provision) with respect to Art. 129 § 2 of the PCPC. Therefore, in proceedings concerning enforcement of an arbitration award it is not permissible to file – instead of an original or officially certified arbitration agreement – a copy thereof certified to be a true copy of the original by an advocate.

1. If (…) a petition to set aside an arbitration award is based on the fact that the award was obtained by means of an offence or the award was issued on the basis of a forged or altered document or the petition is based on the charge of res iuducata, the petition may be filed within the time limit calculated from the day when the party learned of that ground. 

2. An arbitration agreement is a contract to which provisions of the Polish Civil Code apply.

1. An arbitration agreement is unenforceable when, for example, it stipulates such requirements towards persons who are set to be arbitrators, that in effect it is impossible for an arbitral tribunal to be constituted, since it is impossible to indicate persons who meet the requirements. An arbitration agreement is also unenforceable when commencement of proceedings before a tribunal is not possible due to other reasons. An arbitration agreement that has been formulated so vaguely that it is impossible to determine its content may be deemed unenforceable.

2. [W]hen an arbitration agreement turns out to be unenforceable, for example, because of improper indication of the arbitral tribunal, no such thing as conversion of such an agreement into an ad hoc tribunal arbitration agreement is possible.

1. Assessment of an arbitration award submitted for enforcement from the point of view of the public policy clause cannot be made without reference to the content of the award, its factual and substantive law basis; consequently, it cannot be limited only to a formal review of the award and of the documents attached to the motion. Within the public policy clause, the court is authorized to examine the existence and legitimacy of acknowledgement of a debt covered by an arbitration award.

2. The purpose of application of the public policy clause is not to protect the interest of the party affected by the outcome of the arbitration proceedings, but to protect the legal order of the state.

3. [T]here is no basis for enforcement of an arbitration award if the material available leads to the conclusion that the award may be intended to infringe the legally protected interests of third parties (creditors) from outside of the circle of affiliated companies and persons or is intended to serve objectives other than the objectives which it should serve in view of its character.

1. Assessment of an arbitration award submitted for enforcement from the point of view of the public policy clause cannot be made without reference to the content of the award, its factual and substantive law basis; consequently, it cannot be limited only to a formal review of the award and of the documents attached to the motion. Within the public policy clause, the court is authorized to examine the existence and legitimacy of acknowledgement of a debt covered by an arbitration award.

2. The purpose of application of the public policy clause is not to protect the interest of the party affected by the outcome of the arbitration proceedings, but to protect the legal order of the state.

3. [T]here is no basis for enforcement of an arbitration award if the material available leads to the conclusion that the award may serve objectives other than the objectives which it should serve in view of its character.

4. Legalization of legally dubious business transactions is contrary to the fundamental principles of the legal order of the Republic of Poland… .

1. Relying on objective illegality of actions of the other party to an agreement and possible concurrent grounds of liability does not override the competence of an arbitral tribunal.

2. [A]n arbitration award may be assessed in the context of procedural public order. Subject to assessment is the compliance with the fundamental procedural principles of legal order of procedure that have led to the delivery of the arbitration award (…).

3. An allegation of infringement of Art. 1183 of the Polish Civil Procedure Code may be justified, if an arbitral tribunal conducts proceedings in omission of evidence offered by a party, but only if this evidence was necessary to resolve the case (…).

4. The control of elements comprising an arbitration award cannot be of the same scope as substantive control (of validity) of such an award.

5. When hearing a case, an arbitral tribunal may be guided by legal intuition, and it does not need to – unlike a state court – strictly apply the provisions of substantive law, but may base its ruling also on the principles of equity or good faith. According to the public policy clause expressed in Art. 1206 § 2 point 2 of the Polish Civil Procedure Code, an arbitration award shall be set aside when effects determined by the award are incompatible with a specific norm which is one of the fundamental principles of this public policy (…).

6. The arbitration award that protects one of the partners encumbered with the contractual risk of failure of the business venture does not infringe upon trading certainty and the principle of trading security, in the situation when the investor (the Fund) could limit its own economic risk resulting from engagement of funds by correct, consistent with the agreement, and, above all, loyal conduct.

7. Application of the public policy clause is not aimed at verification whether the assessed arbitration award id compliant with all applicable absolutely binding provisions of law, but whether effects of such an award are contrary to the fundamental principles of national legal order.

Articles 267 and 344 TFEU must be interpreted as precluding a provision in an international agreement concluded between Member States, such as Article 8 of the Agreement on encouragement and reciprocal protection of investments between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, under which an investor from one of those Member States may, in the event of a dispute concerning investments in the other Member State, bring proceedings against the latter Member State before an arbitral tribunal whose jurisdiction that Member State has undertaken to accept.

1. The mere potential option of setting aside of a judgment dismissing a petition to set aside an arbitration award is not a ground for ex officio suspending of the proceedings initiated by a request for enforcement of the arbitration award. This could only happen at the joint request of the parties (Art. 178 of the PCPC)… .

2. A party relying on… a document as evidence in a case, should… take into account that such evidence may be used by the arbitral tribunal in order to determine the factual state or to interpret the declarations of will of the parties.

3. When it decided to rely in the arbitration proceedings on the agreement of 29 October 2014, the party relying on the agreement had to reckon with the fact that this agreement could be used by the arbitral tribunal also to its disadvantage.

4. The said agreement… The contractual provision contained therein that “the agreement may be disclosed to the Court of Arbitration in the necessary scope, but the agreement shall not be used as evidence to the advantage of any party or as a basis for interpretation of any contractual provision of the contract”… did not establish a fundamental principle of procedure that would be binding for the arbitral tribunal. The prohibition to use this document as evidence was binding only for the parties to the contract. Evidentiary agreements are not known in the Polish civil procedure. It is difficult to accept that the parties could, by means of an agreement, exclude procedural provisions relating to evidence prohibition, and with a binding effect for the court at that, with the exceptions resulting from legal regulations. Relying by a party on the agreement… as evidence in the case could be alternatively assessed as contractual disloyalty of the parties… .

5. Pursuant to Art. 1217 of the PCPC, in proceedings for enforcement of an arbitration award issued in the Republic of Poland, the court shall not examine the circumstances referred to in Art. 1214 § 3 of the PCPC (identical to those set out in Art. 1206 § 2 of the PCPC), if a petition to set aside the arbitration award was denied with legal finality. The provision of Article 1217 of the PCPC provides for a binding effect of a final judgment dismissing a petition to set aside an arbitration award other than in relation to a legal relationship (resulting from Article 365 of the PCPC). It follows from Art. 1217 of the PCPC that the state court is bound by the determination regarding admissibility of the arbitration award, and that the arbitration award is not contrary to the public policy clause, therefore the state court does not examine these issues after the petition to set aside the arbitration award was denied with legal finality.

6. [A]rt. 1210 of the PCPC. According thereto, at a closed session, a court may stay the enforcement of an arbitration award, but may condition the stay on submission of a security. It cannot be overlooked that this provision forms a part of the regulation of the proceedings initiated by a petition to set aside an arbitration award (title VII in part five in book four of the Polish Civil Procedure Code – Art. 1205-1211 of the PCPC), and its object is the stay of enforcement of an arbitration award. It does not constitute a ground for staying other rulings.

7. [I]n the present legal state, the only basis for lodging a complaint regarding the appellate court order on enforcement of an arbitration award issued in the Republic of Poland is Art. 1214 § 4 of the PCPC.

1. The phrase “fundamental principles of the legal order” used in Art. 1206 §2(2) of the Civil Procedure Code refers to such a violation of provisions of substantive law that will result in violation of the principles of the rule of law, and the award infringes the overriding legal principles in force in the Republic of Poland and conflicts with the legal order, that is, it violates principles of the political and socioeconomic system.

2. The evaluation conducted in the specific case as to whether the ruling violates fundamental principles of the legal order must be made cautiously, and the wording used in the code should be interpreted narrowly.

3. When deciding to include an arbitration clause in a contract, the parties to a civil relationship consciously waive the formal protection provided to the participants in a judicial trial by various provisions of the Civil Procedure Code…. Consequently, they also agree to procedural conditions that are subject to significant autonomy in the course of the arbitration proceeding, leading to minimal external oversight of awards by the arbitral tribunal….

4. Procedural public policy may also be grounds for review of an arbitration award, in two aspects: the evaluation of the consistency of the procedure leading to issuance of the ruling by the tribunal with the fundamental procedural principles of the legal order, and the effects of such ruling from the point of view of their compliance with procedural public policy, that is, whether they can be reconciled with the system of procedural law.

5. The notion of the “grounds” [for an award] within the meaning of Art. 1197 §2 of the Civil Procedure Code does not literally mean “justification” [of a judgment] within the meaning of the Civil Procedure Code, and this provision deliberately uses the word “grounds” and not “justification.” However, the grounds must contain the elements of reasoning of the arbitral tribunal which demonstrate the correctness (soundness) of the ruling in light of the entirety of the material gathered in the case.

6. Conduct of a fair proceeding is the task of both the state court and the arbitral tribunal. That the arbitral tribunal is not bound by regulations of procedure before a state court and under the Civil Procedure Code itself establishes the rules and method of proceeding before it, as agreed by the parties and as it deems proper, does not mean arbitrariness with respect to the principles of judicial civil procedure of an adversarial nature.

1. According to Art. 1161 § 1 of the Polish Civil Procedure Code, submission of a dispute to arbitration requires an agreement between the parties defining the subject of the dispute or the legal relationship under which the dispute has arisen or may arise. An obligatory element of such an agreement is indication that resolution of the dispute has been referred to an arbitral tribunal. It should be stressed that an agreement which does not contain the aforementioned statement is not an arbitration agreement … .

2. In the case, both mandate contracts contained a provision stating “all disputes arising out of a mandate contract shall be resolved amicably”. Such a provision does not contain at all any submission of disputes arising between the parties to resolution by an arbitral tribunal, irrespective of whether it would be a permanent arbitral tribunal or an ad hoc arbitral tribunal, that is established in the event of a specific dispute.

3. [A]micable dispute resolution is not equivalent to the institution of arbitration to which the parties submit the resolution of a dispute from a particular legal relationship. Art. 1161 of the Polish Civil Procedure Code stipulates a requirement of indicating jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal directly, in a separate contract or in a so-called arbitration clause, which is one of the provisions of the main contract.