SWEDEN Law and Practice Contributed by: Simon Arvmyren, Christopher Stridh and Mikaela Tysk, Delphi
13.3 Circumstances to Challenge an Arbitral Award In the Arbitration Act, a distinction is made between challenging an award and seeking to invalidate an award. A challenge of an award must be filed within three months from the receipt of the award. The grounds for challenge are exclusively related to procedural errors. Errors related to the merits of the case cannot be challenged. The procedural grounds that may be subject to challenge are stated in Section 34 of the Arbitration Act. The invalidity of an award is limited to awards that violate Swedish public policy and awards that are not rendered in written form or signed by a majority of the arbitrators. An award is also invalid if it decides a matter that was not arbitra- ble. Invalidity may be invoked without any time limit (see Section 33 in the Arbitration Act). 13.4 Procedure for Enforcing Domestic and Foreign Arbitration Arbitral awards are enforceable according to Chapter 3, Section 1, paragraph 1, point 4 of the Swedish Enforcement Act. In order to be enforceable, the award must be made in writ- ing and signed by a majority of the arbitrators. The enforcement agency needs to verify that the opposing party is allowed an opportunity to comment on the enforcement application before taking any action. In relation to foreign arbitration awards, it is required that the court of appeal declares the award to be enforceable before it can be enforced in Sweden. As soon as the declara- tion of enforceability has been obtained, the applicant can turn to the Swedish enforcement agency in the same way as regards a domestic award. The court only reviews that the award
meets the formal requirements and not the mer- its or substance of the award (which is largely the same as set out in the New York Convention). 14. Outlook 14.1 Proposals for Dispute Resolution Reform There are no overall proposals to modify or reform the Acts dealing with dispute resolution, but the Swedish Arbitration Act was recently revised. As mentioned in 2.5 Types of Cost Consid- ered Under Third-Party Funding , the influence from the UK market is significant as regards the development of the third-party funded market in Sweden. In the newly released judgment regard- ing litigation funding agreements, Paccar Inc v Road Haulage Association Ltd [2023] UKSC 28 the Supreme Court in the UK held that an agree- ment with third parties who play no part in the conduct of a litigation process, but are to be paid a share of any damages recovered by the claimant, constitutes a “damages-based-agree- ment” (or DBA) in the meaning of the applicable legislation which regulates such agreements. According to English law, these agreements must be in compliance the relevant regulatory regime; if not, they are unenforceable. From a Swedish perspective, this judgment is unlikely to have any direct impact on the Swedish third- party funded market, since Swedish law does not regulate DBAs. 14.2 Growth Areas In recent years, the Swedish market for com- mercial disputes has experienced growth in areas such as competition law, crypto-assets, and anti-money laundering-related cases. With respect to competition law, a third-party-funded,
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