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# Can an ICSID award be assigned? Three courts, three answers.
- URL: https://internationalarbitrationobserver.com/can-an-icsid-award-be-assigned-three-courts-three-answers/
- Published: 2026-09-27T19:19:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-27T19:19:20.000Z
- Author: Pierluigi Salvati
- Tags: Investment Arbitration

A recent decision of the **U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia** has brought an interesting question in ICSID enforcement into sharper focus.

In **Eurus Energy Holdings Corp. v. Kingdom of Spain**, the Court allowed **Blasket Renewable Investments LLC** to replace Eurus as claimant and entered judgment on the ICSID award in full. The point was contested.

Spain relied on **Article 54(2) of the ICSID Convention** and, in particular, on the reference to “a party” seeking recognition or enforcement. It also relied on the recent English decision in **OperaFund Eco-Invest v Spain \[2025\] EWHC 2874 (Comm)**. The D.D.C. was not persuaded. Its starting point was simple: **Article 54(2) does not say anything about assignment.** It prescribes what a party seeking recognition or enforcement must provide to the competent court. It does not determine who may hold the underlying enforcement right.

The Court then looked to the architecture of Article 54: an ICSID award is to be enforced **“as if” it were a final judgment** of a court in the enforcing State; execution is governed by the law of that State. In the United States, §1650a reinforces that equivalence by according ICSID awards the same **full faith and credit** as domestic judgments. Since D.C. law permits the assignment of final judgments, the Court held that the assignment to Blasket was valid.

However, this is not an uncontested proposition internationally.

In **Blasket Renewable Investments LLC v Spain \[2025\] FCA 1028**, the Federal Court of Australia reached the same practical result, but through a somewhat different route: it held that there was **no rule of public international law prohibiting the assignment of an ICSID award**, and accepted that “party” in Article 54(2) could include an assignee. Domestic law could then operate on the rights of enforcement.

The English Commercial Court, however, took the opposite view in **OperaFund**, reading Article 54(2) in the context of Article 53 and the wider language of Chapter IV. In its view, “a party” means a party to the underlying ICSID arbitration. **Only such a party can seek recognition and enforcement of the award.**

So we now have a neat split:

**\> Australia:** the Convention does not prohibit assignment; the assignee can enforce.

**\> England:** the Convention reserves enforcement to the original parties; the economic benefit can nevertheless be transferred.

**\> US:** Article 54 does not regulate assignability; the question can be determined by the domestic law applicable to enforcement.

The disagreement is about **what kind of legal right Article 54 creates**: a Convention-based right attached to the original investor, or an enforcement right which can circulate in much the same way as a domestic judgment?

That is a rather important question for an increasingly sophisticated **secondary market in arbitral awards**.