Creditors Prevail Again: DC District Court Enforces Four ICSID Awards Against Spain

In two late-September 2026 opinions, the D.C. District Court enforced four International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) awards against Spain, all now held by assignee Blasket. The court rejected Spain's European Union law defenses and held that assignees may enforce ICSID awards in the United States. According to the source, these rulings, together with the D.C. Circuit's NextEra decision that U.S. courts have jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to enforce intra-EU awards against sovereigns, strengthen the United States, and D.C. in particular, as a forum for enforcement.

Spain argued that the awards should not be enforced because the European Commission and EU courts have found intra-EU investment arbitration incompatible with EU law and payment of such awards to be unlawful state aid. Relying on Blinder, Spain sought a collateral attack on the awards. The court declined to extend that exception, holding that full faith and credit under 22 U.S.C. § 1650a bars relitigating issues the tribunals already decided, and that Blinder reaches only a prior court's jurisdictional determinations. Because Spain did not dispute the tribunals' jurisdiction, the exception did not apply.

The court also rejected Spain's comity and foreign sovereign compulsion arguments, finding that these doctrines address conflicts with U.S. regulatory law, whereas the petitioner simply sought enforcement of a foreign judgment. On the act of state doctrine, the court held that an enforcing court's role is limited to examining ICSID's jurisdiction, the authenticity of the award, and whether ICSID would treat the award as binding, so it had no occasion to review the European Commission's state-aid determination.

The court also addressed assignability. Blasket acquired the awards from the original claimants and was not a party to the arbitrations. Spain argued that "a party" in Article 54(2) of the ICSID Convention refers only to parties to the arbitration. The High Court of England and Wales agreed with Spain in OperaFund Eco-Invest SICAV PLC v. Kingdom of Spain; that judgment is on appeal. The D.C. court, following the S.D.N.Y. decision in Blue Ridge Investments v. Republic of Argentina, reasoned that Article 54(2) does not address who may enforce awards and says nothing about assignability, and that Articles 54(1) and (3) require enforcement as domestic judgments, which would ordinarily permit assignee enforcement. The source notes that the Federal Court of Australia has also sided with assignees. Until the English appeal is resolved, assignees may sue in their own name in the U.S. but may need to proceed in England in the original claimant's name.

Separately, on September 30, 2026, on remand, the same court again confirmed an UNCITRAL award in favor of Deutsche Telekom against India, dismissing India's sovereign immunity objection and New York Convention defenses. The source identifies remaining open questions: whether creditors can attach Spain's U.S. assets and collect, whether the English Court of Appeal will entrench the transatlantic split on assignability, and how far EU institutions will press member states and courts to block payment.