On Feb. 15, the D.C. District Court in NextEra Energy Global Holdings B.V., et al. v. Kingdom of Spain, rejected a motion to dismiss a petition for enforcement of an arbitral award filed by two Dutch companies, a potentially encouraging signal for many parties that have obtained or may obtain similar awards under intra-EU treaties regarding their enforcement prospects in the United States. The NextEra decision could have wide-reaching effects that ripple across the Atlantic.

  1. Achmea and the EU Commission’s Vision of a Federal Europe

In NextEra, Spain argued that the court lacked jurisdiction to order the award creditors’ enforcement petition on the basis of the Achmea line of cases rendered by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In those decisions, the CJEU found that EU law prohibits member states from entering into arbitration agreements with investors from other EU member states, suggesting that such agreements are legally invalid.