ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Cosmin Vasile and Alina Tugearu, Zamfirescu Racoți Vasile & Partners Attorneys At Law
13.3 Circumstances to Challenge an Arbitral Award Set-aside claims may be asserted by the parties on the following limited grounds: • the dispute was non-arbitrable; • the arbitration agreement did not exist or was invalid/ineffective; • the arbitral tribunal was not properly consti- tuted; • the claimant in the set-aside claim was absent and was not duly notified of the hear- ing when the main arguments were heard; • the award was rendered after the expiry of the time limit; • the award granted something that was not requested (ultra petita) or granted more than was requested (plus petita); • the award failed to mention the tribunal’s decision on the relief sought and did not include the reasoning, the date or place of the decision or the signatures of the arbitrators; • the award violated public policy, mandatory legal provisions or morality; or • the Constitutional Court has declared the legal provisions relied on in the award to be unconstitutional. 13.4 Procedure for Enforcing Domestic and Foreign Arbitration Domestic arbitral awards are treated and enforced in the same way as court decisions, whereas foreign arbitral awards are subject to recognition and enforcement proceedings before the Romanian courts. As a matter of prin- ciple, any foreign arbitral award is recognised and may be enforced in Romania as long as the dispute is arbitrable according to Romanian law and the award does not comprise measures that are contrary to the public order of Romanian pri- vate international law.
In order for the recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award to be granted, the parties must comply with certain formal requirements – they must file a request to this effect before a compe- tent court and attach legalised or apostilled cer- tified copies of the translated award and arbitra- tion agreement. The court vested with hearing a request for the recognition and enforcement of a foreign arbitral award is prohibited from review- ing the merits of the dispute, with its examina- tion being limited to the grounds for refusal of recognition and enforcement, as set out in the Code of Civil Procedure. These grounds follow those established in the New York Convention, such as the parties not having the capacity to conclude the arbitration agreement or the arbi- tration agreement not being valid. 14. Outlook 14.1 Proposals for Dispute Resolution Reform Currently, there are no proposals for dispute res- olution reform, given that the last major reform of the Civil Procedure Code was in 2018. 14.2 Growth Areas The main area of growth for contractual disputes in Romania is largely driven by the increasing complexity and volume of commercial agree- ments in three key sectors: • construction and infrastructure; • energy; and • real estate development. First, as Romania continues to invest heavily in infrastructure and urban development, large- scale projects are prone to contractual disputes. Issues like delays in project delivery, cost over- runs, breach of performance guarantees and
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