Does Noncompliance with Pre-arbitration Dispute Settlement Procedures Affect Awards Enforceability in Russia?
Dispute resolution clauses often provide for negotiations, conciliation or a similar procedure before arbitration. Both UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration and the Russian law contain no provisions on the legal effect of the pre-arbitration procedure of dispute settlement. In particular, they are silent on whether its non-fulfillment precludes the arbitral tribunal’s competence. Accordingly, state courts have to determine whether and where a failure to comply with such procedure forms grounds for refusal to enforce an arbitral award.
Sometimes in cases on foreign or domestic arbitral awards’ enforcement, or on setting aside domestic awards, debtors argue that the ca [...]
Some Findings of the Russian Constitutional Court on International Arbitration
Under the Russian legal system, the last resort a party has with respect to challanging a court decision is to apply to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation with a claim to review the decision’s compliance with the Russian Constitution in terms of the provisions of laws and/or regulations applied by lower courts. There are very few cases in which the Constitutional Court opined on matters related to international arbitration.
Since the adoption of the Law “On International Commercial Arbitration” founded on the UNCITRAL Model Law, the compliance of its provisions with the Russian Constitution has been challenged four times. Three times the subject of the challenge was Ar [...]
Russian President’s Bill (Draft Law) on Mediation – Is a New Epoch of ADR beginning in Russia?
Unlike arbitration which is quite solidly supported by legislation (the law of the Russian Federation “On International Commercial Arbitration”, which is almost completely based on the UNCITRAL Model Law, was adopted in 1993. The Federal Law “On Arbitration Courts” governing domestic arbitration entered into force in 2002), mediation in Russia lacks adequate legal framework. The Commercial Procedure Code and the Labor Code expressly declare that disputes can be resolved by mediation, but many important issues are not yet specified in law. Furthermore, there are no guarantees of confidentiality of the procedure and no prohibition to call for mediators as witnesses of what they have le [...]
A Recent ICC Award Enforcement in Russia: are Russian Courts Really Becoming More Arbitration-Friendly?
In post-Soviet time Russian courts have already developed quite a vast practice of recognition and enforcement of international arbitral awards. One can even already fetch out some trends in such practice. Thorough case study shows that certain distrust to international arbitration and unexpected obstacles to the enforcement of the awards caused by lack of experience in dealing with foreign-related matters, reflected in some early judgments, gradually go.
In Russia the decisions on requests for enforcement of the arbitral awards made in disputes of commercial or other economic nature are vested with the commercial courts (“arbitrazhnyie sudy”). It should be mentioned that the arbitrazh c [...]
