In institutional arbitration, an award that resolves preliminary or prejudicial issues without determining the arbitral proceedings is not independently challengeable, but may be challenged only together with the final award, pursuant to Article 827(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, unlike an award that partially decides the merits of the dispute, which is immediately challengeable.
The setting aside of an arbitral award for nullity under Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure is a form of limited challenge and does not empower the court to re-examine the merits of the arbitrators' decision, permitting solely the determination of whether any of the exhaustively listed grounds of nullity under that provision are made out, with a re-examination of the merits being possible only in the rescissory phase following a finding of nullity.
In institutional arbitration, following the reform introduced by Article 24 of Legislative Decree No. 40/2006, setting aside of the award for breach of rules of law relating to the merits of the dispute is permitted only where expressly so provided by the parties in the arbitration agreement or by law, pursuant to Article 829(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, with the consequence that such a ground is inadmissible where the arbitration clause does not provide for that possibility.
Arbitral jurisdiction founded on an arbitration clause contained in a contract extends to collateral agreements between the same parties that relate to the manner of performance of the principal contract, where such agreements fall within the objective scope of the submission to arbitration in respect of any dispute concerning the interpretation, performance and application of the contract.
In proceedings for the setting aside of an arbitral award, a breach of the right to be heard, relevant for the purposes of Article 829(9) of the Code of Civil Procedure, must be examined from a substantive rather than a merely formal standpoint, by ascertaining whether there has been an actual impairment of the opportunity to make submissions and to respond, with the consequence that the award is null only where the challenge, in addition to identifying the defect, specifies the particular prejudice caused to the right of defence.
In institutional arbitration, nullity of the award for contradictory provisions, as provided for in Article 829(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure, arises exclusively where there is a contradiction between the different parts of the operative part, or between the reasoning and the operative part such as to make it impossible to understand the ratio decidendi, equivalent to an absolute substantive lack of reasoning, and not on account of any mere internal contradictoriness between different parts of the reasoning.
Lack of reasoning in an arbitral award, as a defect falling within Article 829(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure read in conjunction with Article 823(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, is established only where the reasoning is entirely absent or so deficient as not to permit identification of the ratio decidendi, revealing a course of argument that is wholly unacceptable from a dialectical standpoint such as to amount to an absence of reasoning.