The French approach to enforcement of arbitral awards, international public policy and corruption

In recent years, French courts have decided to adopt an uncompromising stance in the fight against corruption in international arbitration. While French enforcement/annulment courts were originally conducting a limited review of arbitral awards dealing with corruption allegations on international public policy grounds, they now carry a full re-examination of such awards accepting that a corruption plea be raised for the first time before them and admitting new evidence. What is at stake, in terms of international public policy, is to define the happy medium between, on the one hand, the necessity to preserve the enforceability of international arbitral awards, and, the necessity to fight corruption. This paper presents the evolution of French case law in the past years and makes a critical assessment of the French approach by comparison with other jurisdictions.