Foreign State v. Guarantor (Contractual Undertaking for Investment Subsidy)

A foreign state sought recovery of an investment subsidy from a guarantor based on a co-liability declaration signed in connection with the subsidy granted to a company; the lower court declined jurisdiction as a matter of public law, but the higher court overturned this, reasoning that the co-liability declaration itself, though related to a public grant, was an accessory contractual undertaking with a private law character, akin to a common cumulative assumption of debt, as it did not involve the state exercising sovereign powers deviating from private law norms, thereby qualifying the claim as a "civil and commercial matter" under Article 1(1) of the Lugano Convention.