Fast Awards, Fragile Enforcement: ICC Highly Expedited Arbitration and the No-Reasons Risk

On 1 June 2026, the International Chamber of Commerce’s (“ICC”) revised Arbitration Rules (the “2026 ICC Rules”) entered into force (as already discussed here), introducing the Highly Expedited Arbitration Provisions (“HEAP”) — an opt-in, fast-track procedure promising a final award within three months of the initial case management conference.  The procedure has attracted attention, primarily for Article 7(2) of Appendix VI, which allows the parties to agree to receive the award without reasons. HEAP already compresses pleadings, evidence and tribunal deliberation into a three-month window. The omission of reasons raises a distinct question about the award’s susceptibility to challenge and enforcement by national courts.

Practitioners cannot afford to ignore the structural tension: purchasing commercial speed at the cost of adjudicative transparency on which enforcement depends. This post examines that tension, maps the jurisdictional fault lines that an unreasoned HEAP award may encounter under the New York Convention at the stage of enforcement, and proposes contractual mechanisms through which the parties can manage the enforcement risks while preserving HEAP’s speed.

Deconstructing HEAP: Mechanics and No-reasons Option

Under Article 33 of the 2026 ICC Rules, once there is mutual consent, the arbitration shall be conducted through Appendix VI as a highly expedited procedure. The dispute is heard by a sole arbitrator. The first case management conference occurs within seven days of the arbitrator’s receipt of the file. The arbitrator has three months to render the final award within which all pleadings, hearings, evidence and ICC scrutiny must be completed. The arbitrator may limit document production, curtail witness or expert testimony, and decide the dispute on documents alone.

However, significant complications arise from a reasonless award. The 2026 ICC Rules, as a general rule, require the award to state reasons upon which it is based. Appendix VI, however, allows the parties to agree that the award will not provide reasons. Parties may opt for HEAP’s three-month timeline while still requiring a reasoned award, a more advisable combination where enforcement is likely to be sought in jurisdictions that treat reasons as part of mandatory procedural public policy. The ICC itself warns that absence of reasons may serve, in some jurisdictions, as a ground for setting aside or refusal of enforcement, despite mutual consent.

Reasoned Award to Reasonless Disposition

A comparable mechanism to HEAP is the Singapore International Arbitration Centre’s (“SIAC”) 2025 Streamlined Procedure, where the final award is rendered within three months from the constitution of the tribunal. This mechanism highlights that expedited timelines are becoming standard. Crucially, as a default rule under SIAC’s mechanism, the tribunal will render reasons in summary form; full waiver requires a separate agreement by the parties. This approach preserves the award’s reasoning without sacrificing the expedited procedure.

A reasoned award demonstrates that the tribunal discharged its mandate, followed due process, applied the governing law and rendered an award capable of external scrutiny. The 2026 ICC Rules require reasons as the default; the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) Model Law takes the same position, unless the parties agree otherwise. Gary Born treats reasoned awards as an important safeguard of procedural fairness and due process in international arbitration. HEAP disrupts this general rule by permitting parties to agree that the award will contain no reasons. Such an election may significantly shorten drafting but creates an enforcement risk when the award reaches a national court. Without reasons, the court sees the result but not the path.

Party Autonomy v. Mandatory Public Law: The Limits of Consent

HEAP is an expression of party autonomy. The limits of that autonomy become visible at the enforcement stage where the award’s operative effect depends on the willingness of the national courts to recognise and enforce it. Consent protects the procedure, but it cannot remove all mandatory constraints imposed by the seat or the enforcement jurisdiction.

The ICC Court’s scrutiny of draft awards considers validity and enforceability at the seat. However, a compressed timeline means that the scrutiny operates under greater pressure in HEAP than in standard proceedings. The difficulty compounds for an unreasoned award because when no reasons exist, the assessment is conducted without the material that makes it meaningful. ICC’s own guidance acknowledges the gap created by the absence of reasons, which may justify setting aside or refusal of enforcement notwithstanding parties’ consent.

Jurisdictions diverge sharply on whether the absence of reasons is a waivable default or a non-derogable requirement. The UNCITRAL Model Law requires reasons unless the parties agree otherwise; England follows a similar approach under section 52(4) of the Arbitration Act 1996. The US also takes a liberal position: the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) does not impose an obligation to give reasons for an award, and US courts routinely enforce unreasoned awards. Under Swiss law, annulment is rare even without written findings, because Article 189 of the Swiss Private International Law Act (“PILA”) gives parties liberty to determine the form and procedure of the award. Swiss courts have held that where an award is unreasoned, the Court is de facto unable to assess whether any ground for annulment exists.

In contrast, several jurisdictions consider reasons as non-waivable, regardless of the parties’ express consent. Article 1713 of the Belgian Judicial Code mandates a reasoned award, with no right of waiver; Article 1717 permits setting aside where the award is unreasoned. Italy is equally uncompromising, treating the statement of reasons as a non-derogable part of the procedure. Article 823 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure requires that an award “must contain” a summary statement of the reasons and preserves the right to challenge an unreasoned award for nullity “notwithstanding any prior waiver.”

Under French law, even though Article 1520 of the French Code of Civil Procedure does not expressly list the absence of reasons as a ground for annulment, the courts have held that the duty to give reasons is inherent in the arbitrator’s mandate as part of the right to a fair trial, even where it is not expressly provided for in the Arbitration Rules to which the parties have submitted. Saudi law requires the award to be written and justified, and permits refusal of enforcement where it contravenes Sharia or public policy. The picture is therefore one of jurisdictional fragmentation: an unreasoned HEAP award may be valid under the ICC procedure, enforceable at one seat, and vulnerable to challenge at another.

The New York Convention Problem

Article V of the New York Convention sets out exhaustive grounds for refusal of recognition or enforcement. Article V(1)(d) permits such refusal where tribunal composition or procedure is not in accordance with the parties’ agreement or the law of the seat. This provision provides a measure of protection precisely because the parties expressly agreed to the procedure. However, if the seat does not allow parties to waive reasons, a “no-reasons” clause will be rendered nugatory and the resulting award will be susceptible to challenge.

Article V(2)(b) permits refusal where enforcement is against the public policy of the enforcing state. For an unreasoned HEAP award, Article V(2)(b) presents a sharper risk than Article V(1)(d) because it can be invoked by the enforcement court on its own motion, even though most jurisdictions construe it narrowly. Parsons & Whittemore confines the public-policy exception to cases where enforcement would violate the forum’s most basic notions of morality and justice. Therefore, the party resisting enforcement on this ground faces a high threshold.

In the absence of reasons, the more compelling challenge may be that an enforcement court is unable to verify whether due process was observed during the arbitration process, especially in jurisdictions where procedural fairness is treated as a part of public policy and may therefore be examined at the enforcement stage.

This challenge will not defeat every unreasoned HEAP award, but it creates material risk where the applicable law treats reasons as a non-waivable requirement such as an element of procedural public policy, or an inherent part of the arbitrator’s mandate.

Drafting Around the Risk

At minimum, the parties should conduct an “enforcement audit” at the agreement stage to identify all jurisdictions where either party holds assets and enforcement may realistically be sought, verifying whether reasons are a non-waivable requirement.

The most institutionally grounded option is the summary-reasons approach. Drawing from SIAC’s Streamlined Procedure, parties to HEAP can agree to a condensed statement of the tribunal’s key findings of fact and conclusions of law calibrated to meet the minimum enforcement threshold and provide material to verify due-process compliance.

A structurally ambitious approach draws on Rule 59 of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) Code, under which the panel is permitted to communicate the operative part before issuing full reasons. Adapted to HEAP, the arbitrator would render the unreasoned award under Article 7(2) of Appendix VI and then, within an agreed period, issue a separate “statement of analysis” identifying the dispositive findings of fact and law. In the HEAP clause, however, this document must be expressly characterized as a contractual undertaking by the arbitrator and not as an award in any form, so that the time limit for any challenge is triggered by the notification of the award itself and remains unaffected by the subsequent statement of analysis. Nonetheless, the protective value of this mechanism is bounded. In jurisdictions where reasons are treated as a matter of public order, a post-award statement of analysis would not cure the enforcement defect.

The no-reasons option remains a high-stakes election that demands careful jurisdictional analysis. Parties drafting a HEAP clause today are pre-litigating enforcement questions of tomorrow. The tools exist; the question is whether parties will use them before national courts answer these questions for them.