Squire Sanders has announced that it won a significant international arbitration for the Slovak Republic against the Dutch company Achmea. The announcement came days before the firm's formal transformation into Squire Patton Boggs.
Achmea, a shareholder of the UNION health insurance company, commenced the arbitration against the Slovak Republic, claiming that the country had breached the Netherlands-Slovak Bilateral Investment Treaty's encouragement and reciprocal protection of investments between the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. According to Achmea, the Slovak Republic's plans to establish a single health insurance company and related conduct was in breach of the Treaty. Achmea requested that the Tribunal order the Slovak Republic to refrain from expropriating Achmea’s private health insurance company, subject to a financial penalty. Further, Achmea claimed that its investment was damaged by the conduct of 17 state-owned hospitals during the negotiations of contracts on healthcare provision, as well as by the purported general instability of the regulatory environment in health insurance.
The arbitral tribunal dismissed all of Achmea’s claims, after determining that the design and implementation of its public health policy is for the State alone to assess. Moreover, the tribunal stated that it is not empowered to intervene in the democratic process of a sovereign state and concluded that it had no jurisdiction over the dispute.
It also ordered Achmea to pay EUR 1.011 million in legal costs to the Slovak Republic, as well as tribunal costs of over EUR 340,000. According to Squire Sanders, the Slovak Republic incurred EUR 1.348 million in costs during the arbitration.
The Squire Sanders team was led by Partners Stephen Anway, George von Mehren, David Alexander, Rostislav Pekar, and Tatiana Prokopova.
