The English Court of Appeal has now delivered its highly anticipated judgment in CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd & Ors v The Republic of India [2026] EWCA Civ 797, unanimously dismissing the appellants’ appeal and confirming that ratification of the New York Convention 1958 does not, by itself, amount to a waiver of adjudicative immunity in English enforcement proceedings for the purposes of enforcing international arbitration awards against a foreign state. The judgment, handed down on 24 June 2026, brings welcome certainty to the English position and aligns it with the recent decision of the High Court of Australia in CCDM Holdings LLC v The Republic of India [2026] HCA 9, discussed in our previous alert.
To recap, the dispute arose from a 2005 contract between Devas Multimedia Private Ltd and Antrix Corporation (a company wholly owned by the Indian government) for the lease of S-Band spectrum on Indian satellites to support a nationwide multimedia communications platform. In 2011, India decided to terminate the project and annul the contract on essential security/national purposes grounds. Mauritian Devas investors subsequently commenced arbitration under the Mauritius-India Bilateral Investment Treaty, obtaining two awards against India exceeding €195 million.
The central issue on appeal was whether India’s ratification of the New York Convention, particularly Article III’s obligation to recognise and enforce foreign arbitral awards, amounted to a prior written submission to the jurisdiction of the English courts under s.2 of the State Immunity Act 1978. The Court of Appeal held that it did not—Article III requires enforcement “in accordance with the rules of procedure” of the enforcing state, and state immunity is a procedural rule under both English and international law. The Court was not persuaded by the argument that “rules of procedure”, on their proper construction, excluded state immunity.
While the appellants attempted to rely on the ICSID Convention analysis in Infrastructure Services Luxembourg SARL v The Kingdom of Spain [2026] UKSC 9 (see our previous alert), the Court held that that analysis could not be “read across” to the New York Convention. Critically, while Article III opens with language similar to Article 54(1) of ICSID, it is qualified by the words “in accordance with the rules of procedure of the territory where the award is relied upon.” Since state immunity is classified as a procedural rule under both English and international law, and there was no reason to read “rules of procedure” in Article III differently from their plain and ordinary meaning, Article III preserves rather than displaces state immunity. The Court also emphasised the structural differences between the two conventions: ICSID is a self-contained regime for investor-state disputes in which a contracting state is necessarily a party, whereas the New York Convention applies to foreign arbitral awards generally. It would be surprising, the Court held, if states had waived both adjudicative and potentially execution immunity merely by ratifying a convention that makes no express reference to state immunity.
The judgment reflects a growing international consensus. The High Court of Australia reached the same conclusion in CCDM Holdings—reasoning which the Court of Appeal described as “obviously correct” and “highly persuasive”—and courts in Germany (Schieds VZ 2006 44) and the United States (Global Voice Group SA v Republic of Guinea, No. 25-7033 (D.C. Cir. 2026)) have similarly rejected the argument that mere ratification of the New York Convention waives state immunity.
The result is a clear distinction in English law: accession to the ICSID Convention may itself amount to a submission to adjudicative jurisdiction for recognition and enforcement purposes (but not a waiver of immunity from execution), whereas ratification of the New York Convention does not amount to a waiver of state immunity at all. As a result, creditors seeking to enforce non-ICSID awards against sovereign states in England will need to identify a separate basis for overcoming immunity. For further key takeaways, please read our previous alert.
We are grateful to our London Trainee Solicitor, Diya Gupta, for her contributions to this client alert.