UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Law and Practice Contributed by: Stuart Paterson, Janine Mallis and Tania Forichon, Herbert Smith Freehills
ratified it. The courts will only refuse to enforce it on certain limited grounds, such as that the award has not yet become binding on the par - ties. The procedure for enforcement is similar to the ADGM (see Part 4 of the ADGM Arbitration Regulations). 5.2 Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Bilateral and Multilateral Conventions Reciprocal enforcement of judgments The UAE has entered into a number of treaties with other countries which govern the recipro - cal enforcement of judgments. The most com - monly used in the Middle East is the Riyadh Arab Convention for Judicial Cooperation of 1983 (the “Riyadh Convention” ) for enforcing foreign judgments and awards. The other commonly used treaty is the GCC Convention of 1996, which allows the recognition and enforcement of judgments and awards without any review of the merits. The other signatories to the GCC Convention are Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. The UAE has also entered several internation - al treaties to enforce judgments with Tunisia, France, India, Egypt, China, and Kazakhstan. In addition, the UAE has entered into new interna - tional judicial co-operation agreements (IJCAs) with the United States, Russia, the Netherlands, and Italy and has ratified extradition treaties with several countries, including Ireland, South Afri - ca, and Denmark. Reciprocity between the UAE and foreign states In the absence of a treaty for mutual recogni - tion of judgments, there is a need for reciproc - ity between the UAE and the foreign state issu - ing the judgment, of which recognition and enforcement are sought in the UAE (Article 85 of UAE Cabinet Resolution No 57 of 2018). On
13 September 2022, the UAE Ministry of Jus - tice (MoJ) sent a letter to the Dubai courts call - ing for the reciprocal enforcement of judgments of the English courts in the UAE. This step fol - lows the English High Court’s decision in Lenkor Energy Trading DMCC v Puri (2020) EWHC 75, in which it was found that a Dubai court judg - ment regarding liability for bounced cheques was a final and conclusive judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction. Since the MoJ’s 2022 letter, there has not been any indication from UAE local courts (whether by way of for - mal announcement or in practice) that it would, from now on, enforce English court judgments under the principle of reciprocity (set out in Arti - cle 85). Nevertheless, the English High Court’s decision in 2023 to again enforce a Dubai court judgment in Emirates NBD Bank PJSC v Rashed Abdulaziz Almakhawi and Others (2023) EWHC 1113 (Comm) may suffice to demonstrate that Lenkor was not a one-off occurrence and per - suade the UAE onshore courts that the reciproc - ity criteria in Article 85(1) have now been met, such that an English court judgment should be enforced in the UAE courts although no further communications from the MoJ have since stated that this would be the case. The requirements under Article 85(2) (eg, that the UAE courts do not have exclusive jurisdiction and that the order is not contrary to public morals) still need to be satisfied. DIFC The DIFC courts have the power to ratify for - eign judgments in accordance with the terms of a treaty for the mutual enforcement of judgments entered into by the UAE, provided the said trea - ty has been incorporated into DIFC law (see Lahela v Lameez [2020] DIFC CA 007] (as the DIFC itself cannot enter into international trea - ties). The DIFC has also entered into non-binding bilateral memoranda or protocols with foreign
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