France: Annulment of arbitral awards: success rates, court trends, and emerging reforms
Sixty second summary
How arbitration decisions can be set-aside in France
The French courts may set aside an award on five limited grounds as set out in Article 1520 of the French Code of Civil Procedure:
- The arbitral tribunal wrongly declared itself competent or incompetent; or
- The arbitral tribunal was improperly constituted; or
- The arbitral tribunal ruled without complying with its mission; or
- The adversarial principle has not been respected; or
- Recognition or enforcement of the award is contrary to international public policy.
More exceptionally, an award may also be subject to review in cases of fraud.
Parties cannot initiate set-aside proceedings before the French courts for awards issued abroad. However, French courts may review the regularity of awards in foreign-seated arbitrations in recognition and enforcement proceedings and may refuse to recognise and/or enforce an award in France if it contravenes one of the five grounds set out in Article 1520 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Until 1 September 2025, set-aside proceedings had to be brought before the regional court of appeal of the seat of the arbitration (e.g. an award relating to an arbitration seated in Lyon would be challenged before the Lyon Court of Appeal etc) although the majority of cases in practice were heard by the Paris Court of Appeal, as almost all international arbitrations in France are seated in Paris.
Since 1 September 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal has sole jurisdiction to rule on all set-aside proceedings brought against international awards rendered in France, regardless of the seat of arbitration.
Either party may challenge the Court of Appeal’s decision in the Cour de cassation (the Supreme Court). The Supreme Court cannot re-examine the merits of the case but only assess the validity of the Court of Appeal's legal reasoning, resulting either in the confirmation or quashing of the latter's decision. If the Supreme Court quashes the Court of Appeal’s decision to set aside an award, the case is then referred back to the Court of Appeal to re-consider the set-aside application, following the solution given by the Supreme Court.
The data-driven analysis
Set-aside proceedings before the Paris Court of Appeal
Number of set-aside proceedings
Between 2022 and 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal issued 87 decisions in set-aside proceedings against international arbitral awards rendered in France. Of these 87 decisions, the Court of Appeal:
- dismissed 71 set-aside applications (81.6%);
- partially set aside 4 arbitral awards (4.6%); and
- completely set aside 12 arbitral awards (13.8%).
With only 12 of the applications to set-aside an arbitral award being successful, we identified the grounds held by the Court of Appeal:
Consistency of the Paris Court of Appeal's decisions
For the period under review, the rate of awards set aside by the Paris Court of Appeal is constant, ranging between 15% and 20%. Additionally, based on this chart, it looks like the number of set-aside applications declined in 2024 and 2025. However, it is more likely that the most recent decisions of the Paris Court of Appeal have not yet been fully published or otherwise made available in the relevant databases.
This study demonstrates that set-aside claims are rarely granted, making it difficult to successfully challenge an arbitral award in France.
Set-aside proceedings before the Supreme Court
Between 2022 and 2025, the Supreme Court handed down 33 decisions in relation to appeals from decisions of the Court of Appeal in set-aside proceedings.
The Supreme Court heard:
- 8 appeals against decisions to set aside an arbitral award;
- 25 appeals against decisions to dismiss set-aside applications.
Notably, the Supreme Court upheld all 25 of the Court of Appeal’s decisions dismissing set-aside applications.
In the 8 cases where the Court of Appeal had set aside an award, the Supreme Court:
- confirmed the annulment in 6 cases;
- quashed the Court of Appeal's decision in 2 cases.
The two cases in which the Supreme Court overruled the Court of Appeal were both investment arbitration cases where the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal stemmed from the characterisation of an “investment” under a bilateral investment treaty. In both cases, the Court of Appeal had substituted its own view for the tribunal's characterisation, which the Supreme Court found amounted to an impermissible review of the merits.
The data indicates therefore that the Supreme Court overturns the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal only in exceptional cases.
Conclusion
This analysis demonstrates that challenging arbitral awards is difficult in France. Consistent with the principle of a single level of jurisdiction, France restricts recourse against awards to annulment on limited and compelling grounds.
The high rate of dismissed set-aside applications (81.6%, which as noted below may overrepresent the number of successful applications) confirms the security France offers parties regarding enforcement of their awards. Since courts will not revisit the merits, successful challenges must show clear violations of the grounds for annulment set out in Article 1520 of the French Code of Civil Procedure.
Looking ahead, a reform of French arbitration law is currently underway. The proposed reforms would introduce an action before the Tribunal judiciaire to render an arbitral award issued abroad unenforceable in France if it is considered contrary to French public policy. This would be a significant change because, whilst awards issued abroad currently cannot be subject to set-aside proceedings in France, under the new law a losing party could act pre-emptively to prevent enforcement in France, rather than waiting for the winning party to seek recognition and enforcement (as is currently required).
Consequently, we may see an increase in litigation related to the enforcement of arbitral awards with this new recourse.
Research and Methodology
There is no official data on post-award litigation in France, whether for set-aside proceedings or recognition and/or enforcement proceedings.
In the absence of official published data, CMS collected, reviewed and analysed 120 decisions handed down by the Paris Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court in set-aside proceedings against international awards between 1 January 2022 and 16 September 2025. For the purposes of this analysis, we focused only on the Paris Court of Appeal as, in practice, most set-aside proceedings were brought before the Paris Court of Appeal as almost all international arbitrations in France are seated in Paris.
Two caveats should be made regarding the data collated:
- First, it has not been possible to review all decisions handed down by the Paris Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court as there is no official register of all French court decisions.
- Second, it is likely that the statistics above overrepresent the percentage of cases in which the courts partially or fully annulled an award. This is because, decisions setting aside arbitral awards are, due to their significance, always published and commented upon in practice, whereas decisions rejecting an annulment application may not necessarily be.
