## Facts

- A Turkish clothing manufacturer (claimant) and a German clothing retailer (respondent) contracted for the sale of ready-made seasonal apparel.
- The contract contained an ICC arbitration clause with the seat in Zurich, Switzerland, under the 1988 ICC Rules and Swiss PILA Chapter 12.
- The retailer cancelled the orders shortly before the delivery date; each side blamed the other and sought damages, but merits were reserved for a later final award.
- During the arbitration, the respondent sought an interim award ordering the claimant to provide security, arguing it might not recover costs or an eventual award.
- The respondent based its request primarily on asserted general difficulties enforcing foreign arbitral awards in Turkey, supported by Turkish appellate materials and academic commentary.
- The claimant opposed the request as premature and argued that enforcement concerns were for courts at the enforcement stage, not for the tribunal to pre-judge.

## Issues

1. Whether an ICC tribunal seated in Switzerland has authority under the 1988 ICC Rules and Swiss arbitration law to order interim security of the type requested.
2. Whether generalized evidence of enforcement difficulty in the claimant’s home jurisdiction, without party-specific proof of non-payment risk, warrants an order for security.
3. Whether interim security may be used to anticipate or offset perceived enforcement behavior of courts in the prospective enforcement forum.
4. Whether the request was premature at the procedural stage presented.

## Decision

- The sole arbitrator denied the respondent’s application for an interim award ordering the claimant to provide security.
- The tribunal proceeded on the basis that interim measures may be available in principle, but found the requested security unjustified on the record presented.
- The arbitration continued to the merits without requiring either party to post security.

## Legal Principles

- Interim measures in ICC arbitration are discretionary and should be ordered only when necessary and proportionate to protect the efficacy of the proceedings.
- A request for security ordinarily requires concrete, case-specific indications of a serious non-recovery risk (e.g., insolvency, asset dissipation, bad-faith conduct), not abstract concerns.
- General assertions that enforcement may be difficult in a party’s home jurisdiction are, by themselves, insufficient to justify imposing security on that party.
- Recognition and enforcement are matters for competent state courts at the enforcement stage; an arbitral tribunal should not pre-empt that process by assuming non-enforcement and imposing security on that basis.
- Timing matters: where the record is undeveloped and exceptional risk is not shown, security may be denied as disproportionate or premature.

## Conclusion

The tribunal refused to order security because the respondent relied mainly on generalized enforcement-risk arguments tied to the claimant’s domicile rather than concrete evidence of a party-specific threat to recovery, and because enforcement concerns were better left to courts at the appropriate stage.


Interim Award in ICC Case No. 8786, 11(1) ICC Int’l Ct. Arb. Bull. 81 (2000)