The Mele Engineering Consortium, a grouping of engineering firms and professional associations, achieved a significant result before the Italian Supreme Court (Judgment No. 3458/2025), securing an important confirmation of fundamental procedural and civil law principles governing the relationship between final arbitral awards and subsequent administrative self-review measures.
The dispute arose from more than twenty years of litigation between the Consortium and the Lazio Region concerning the entitlement to fees for the design of a motorway connection commissioned by the regional authority, as well as damages resulting from the unlawful award of subsequent detailed design activities to other contractors.
Two arbitral awards, issued in 2005 and 2009 in connection with a public procurement procedure launched on 12 January 1998 for the preparation of the final and executive design of a road link between the Pontine area and the A2 motorway, had ordered the Lazio Region to pay substantial sums both as remuneration for the work performed and as compensation for the work wrongfully prevented.
The Region did not challenge either award, which therefore became final and binding. However, while it complied with the first award, it failed to comply with the second and, several years later, on 7 June 2011, adopted a self-review measure annulling the original tender procedure through which the contract had been awarded to the Consortium.
Relying on that administrative measure, subsequently upheld by the Administrative Courts, the Lazio Region commenced proceedings before the Rome first instance Tribunal seeking a declaration that the arbitral awards were legally ineffective, claiming repayment of the sums paid under the first award and a declaration that the amounts awarded under the second award were not due.
Rome first instance Tribunal upheld the Region’s claim, holding that the subsequent annulment of the tender procedure had retroactively deprived the arbitration agreement of legal effect and rendered the arbitral awards null and ineffective. It therefore ordered repayment of the sums received under the first award and declared that no sums were due under the second.
The Consortium appealed. In Judgment No. 929/2019, the Court of Appeal of Rome reversed the first-instance decision, holding that the subsequent annulment of the tender procedure, aside from being untimely, could not retroactively invalidate the arbitration agreement, automatically terminate the contract, or affect arbitration proceedings that had already been commenced and concluded with final arbitral awards.
The Lazio Region then appealed to the Italian Supreme Court. In Judgment No. 3458/2025, the Court confirmed the appellate decision and clarified that the administrative annulment of a tender procedure, even where validated by the Administrative Courts, may have indirect consequences for an arbitration agreement but cannot affect it where a final arbitral award has already been issued and the validity and effectiveness of the arbitration agreement have themselves become res judicata.
The Supreme Court further reaffirmed that the authority of res judicata applies equally to unchallenged arbitral awards, consistently with the principles established by the Joint Chambers of the Supreme Court in Order No. 24153/2013, according to which the activity of ritual arbitrators is judicial in nature and substitutes the jurisdiction ordinarily exercised by state courts.