Court of Appeal of Milan, 18 February 2026, No. 411

The arbitration agreement, whether for arbitration or contractual arbitration (arbitrato irrituale), requires written form as a condition of validity (ad substantiam). The absence of proof of an arbitration clause in written form precludes the characterisation of a document as an arbitral award, a handwritten annotation appended to an electronic communication being incapable of constituting valid proof of the existence of a prior arbitration agreement entered into in the required form.