The Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) has upheld an £183 million UNCITRAL Award that had been rendered in favour of two UK Claimants against an EU State pursuant to Article 26 of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).
A three-Judge bench of the SICC – comprising Maniam J, Hascher IJ and Ramsey IJ – in an 87 pp. anonymised Judgment issued on 9 January 2026 rejected the EU State’s five separate grounds of challenge against the Award. The first ground involved the State’s so-called “intra-EU” objection: the argument that since the dispute involved an investment made from one EU State into another EU State, then the dispute is governed exclusively by EU law which in turn precludes international arbitration from resolving such a dispute. This was the first time that Singapore’s courts have had to consider this issue. The other grounds of challenge also rejected by the SICC were that there was no valid “investment” as defined by the ECT; that the investor had allegedly breached a “fork-in-the-road” requirement, since the investor had already submitted “the dispute” to an “applicable, previously agreed dispute settlement procedure” and thus should not now be able to use ECT arbitration; a Singapore public policy objection; and a natural justice objection.
In the SICC, Professor Dan Sarooshi KC acted with Liew Wey-ren Colin (Providence Law Asia LLC) and Marc Veit and Robert Bradshaw (both of Lalive (London) LLP) to represent the two UK investors, instructed by Ngo Wei Shing and Rajiv Hariharan of Providence Law Asia LLC. Professor Sarooshi, Mr Veit and Mr Bradshaw appeared in the SICC as Singapore registered foreign lawyers.
