A partnership includes in its articles of association, amended in 2006, an arbitration clause referring all corporate disputes to arbitrators under the rules of an arbitral chamber. One partner seeks interim relief from the ordinary court under Article 700 of the Civil Procedure Code, requesting removal of the director for serious management irregularities. The defendant challenges the state court’s jurisdiction in favour of the arbitrators. Which court has jurisdiction over interim relief when the arbitration clause predates the 2022 reform but references arbitral rules that govern arbitrators’ interim powers?

Venice Court, in its order of 6th May 2025 (Italian text available here), has addressed this delicate procedural question arising in the new legislative landscape following Legislative Decree 149/2022.

The ruling resolved the matter by affirming state court competence, but the reasoning adopted highlights interpretive aspects deserving particular attention for their systemic implications on the division of jurisdiction between courts and arbitrators in interim relief matters.

As is well known, following amendments introduced by Legislative Decree 149/2022 to Article 818 of the Civil Procedure Code, our legal system now permits parties to confer upon arbitrators the power to grant interim relief measures.

This innovation altered the previous framework that reserved competence for interim relief to state courts (save for residual exceptions), even in the presence of arbitration agreements.

The reform therefore introduced a new system for dividing competence, subject however to specific manifestation of the parties’ intent, which may occur either through express clauses or by reference to arbitral rules that provide for such power.

Venice Tribunal approached the question through dual reasoning that merits particular attention.

First, the court clarified that “the power to adopt interim relief measures is therefore subordinated to a specific manifestation of intent in that regard, whence the provision can only apply to articles of association adopted or amended after its entry into force”.

However, the decisive element of the ruling lies in the second line of reasoning: “it is Article 22-bis of the currently applicable Arbitral Rules, in force from 15th June 2023, itself that establishes that arbitrators may issue urgent and provisional interim proceedings only where the arbitration agreement was concluded after the Rules’ entry into force”.

The case’s peculiarity lies in the fact that the arbitral rules referenced by the arbitration clause contained a specific temporal provision limiting application of interim powers to agreements concluded after their entry into force.

This circumstance proved determinative for the decision, as it enabled the Tribunal to resolve the matter without addressing the more complex interpretive problem of applying Article 818 of the Civil Procedure Code to arbitration clauses predating the 2022 reform.

However, the Tribunal’s reasoning leaves unresolved a systemic question of particular relevance: what would the solution have been in the presence of arbitral rules lacking the specific temporal limitation applied in this case?

In other words, the ruling fails to clarify whether Article 818 of the Civil Procedure Code might apply to pre-reform arbitration clauses when these reference arbitral rules that, whilst governing arbitrators’ interim powers, contain no specific temporal limitations on their application.

The interpretive gap highlighted by reading the order opens the door to two different approaches: a restrictive approach, whereby the amended Article 818 of the Civil Procedure Code applies exclusively to arbitration agreements subsequent to its entry into force, regardless of the referenced rules’ content (under this view, the arbitration agreement’s conclusion date would constitute the decisive element for determining competence); and an extensive approach, whereby Article 818 of the Civil Procedure Code might apply even to pre-reform agreements when these reference arbitral rules governing arbitrators’ interim powers without temporal limitations (thus the reference to rules would constitute sufficient manifestation of intent for conferring interim competence).