In matters concerning the recognition of foreign arbitral awards, the assessment of incompatibility with public policy must be interpreted restrictively, being limited to the fundamental and mandatory norms of the legal system and excluding any attenuated notion of public policy that would encompass the entirety of imperative norms.
For the purposes of recognition and enforcement of foreign awards, the requirement of non-incompatibility with public policy must be assessed with exclusive reference to the operative part, which encapsulates the decisum of the arbitral ruling, and may never translate into an assessment of the reasoning, which would constitute a review on the merits that is categorically excluded.
The incompatibility with public policy of a foreign arbitral award must emerge immediately from reading the operative part, understood in light of the award as a whole, and cannot derive indirectly from a comparison between the award and the evidentiary material considered by the arbitrators or between the award and factual data which the arbitrators did not even have at their disposal.
In proceedings for recognition of foreign arbitral awards, the judge cannot identify mere errors in adjudication (errores in iudicando) or procedural errors (errores in procedendo) committed by the arbitrators, review the reasoning process, or call into question the ratio decidendi adopted by the arbitrators in support of the arbitral award.
Where the judge of the State of origin has ruled on appeal, excluding the existence of the defect of ruling beyond the limits of the arbitration clause, a fresh assessment of the same defect is not admissible in proceedings for recognition of the foreign award.