The challenge for nullity of an arbitral award does not constitute an ordinary appeal, but rather a review limited to verifying the existence of one of the grounds exhaustively provided for by Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure, constituting a means of challenge on restricted grounds that permits the court hearing the challenge to annul the award exclusively in the presence of the grounds expressly specified by law.
In proceedings challenging an arbitral award, the court seized may proceed to a re-examination of the merits of the dispute (iudicium rescissorium) pursuant to Article 830 of the Code of Civil Procedure only where it has previously declared the nullity of the award in the rescinding phase (fase rescindente), any assessment of the soundness of the arbitral decision being otherwise precluded.
The challenge of an arbitral award requires compliance with the requirement of necessary specificity of the grounds in a manner more rigorous than in ordinary appeal proceedings, in that the challenging party must formulate its complaints so as to enable the precise verification that the objections correspond to the grounds of nullity exhaustively provided for by Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
In proceedings challenging an arbitral award, the court may not raise the nullity of the award of its own motion nor declare its invalidity on a ground other than those relied upon in the challenge, in application of the party-disposition principle and of the principle of correspondence between the relief sought and the relief granted.
Following the reform introduced by Legislative Decree No. 40/2006, the challenge of an arbitral award for violation of rules of law relating to the merits of the dispute is admissible exclusively where expressly provided for by the parties in the arbitration agreement or by law, challenge on grounds of contrariety to public policy remaining in any event permissible, with the consequence that, in the absence of an express conventional extension, judicial review is confined to errors in procedendo only.
For the purposes of Article 829 n. 4 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the thema decidendum submitted to the arbitrators in the presence of an arbitration clause is identified by the questions formulated by the parties, the arbitral jurisdiction extending to any aspect of the matter relevant to establishing whether and to what extent the claim asserted is well-founded, without the examination of contractual elements and factual circumstances necessary for the decision constituting an excess of the limits of the arbitration agreement.
The nullity of the award for contradictory provisions, as provided for by Article 829(1) n. 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, exists exclusively where there is a contradiction between the different components of the operative part of the award or between the reasoning and the operative part such as to render it impossible to reconstruct the ratio decidendi, whereas internal inconsistency between different parts of the reasoning is relevant as a defect of the award only where it renders it absolutely impossible to identify the logical and legal reasoning underlying the decision due to the total absence of reasoning attributable to its functional model.