The Joint Panels of the Supreme Court issued a “unifying decision” stating the proper procedure for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards to be followed by the Albanian courts of appeal. The Court held: (1) the recognition procedure consists of two stages; at the first stage, the courts only examine whether the formal conditions set by the 1958 New York Convention and the Albanian Code of Civil Procedure are met. If there are defects and these defects are not cured in the course of the proceeding, the court dismisses the application without prejudice; it does not issue a final decision rejecting the application. If the conditions are met, the court proceeds to examine the substantive grounds for denying recognition and enforcement. (2) The New York Convention implicitly requires that the debtor under the award be summoned to the recognition proceeding, since it lays the burden of proving the substantive grounds for refusing recognition and enforcement on that party. (3) The court of appeal must ascertain on its own initiative whether the applicant has supplied the original written arbitration agreement or a certified copy thereof, together with its application, as required by the Convention (though not by the CCP). (4) The court must examine the grounds under Art. V(2) of the Convention ex officio. The Supreme Court then turned to the case at hand. It reversed the decision below, which had denied recognition and enforcement of an ICC award rendered in Switzerland, and remanded the case for a retrial. The court below correctly summoned the award debtor to the recognition proceeding, but erred in finding that the failure of the claimants to comply with the obligation under Albanian law to pay the tax on judicial acts (a percentage of the value of the award) was a ground for refusing their application with prejudice. Also, the court below failed to ascertain whether the claimants supplied the original arbitration agreement or a certified copy thereof, as required by Art. IV(1)(b) of the New York Convention.