Arbitration in Europe seems fated to be “steamrollered by the juggernaut of EU conformity”,with the New York Convention no longer functioning and tribunals unable to determine their own jurisdiction, an audience in London heard last week.

Matthew Weiniger, of Herbert Smith LLP in London, made this bleak assessment as part of a talk entitled “Nightmare or Fairy Tale: Arbitration and the EU”, in which he discussed the effect of last year’s decisions by the European Court of Justice in West Tankers and the English Court of Appeal in National Navigation v Endesa. Sebastian Perry reports.