Changes to the Arbitration Act in 2013 - Czech and Central European Yearbook of Arbitration - Interaction of Arbitration and Courts - 2015

Author(s):

Tereza Profeldová

Page Count:

14 pages

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Published:

March, 2015

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The most recent changes to Act No. 216/1994 Coll. (the Arbitration Act), which

became effective on January 1, 2014, were adopted in connection with the

recodification of private law in the Czech Republic. The legislature took the

opportunity provided by the amendment to correct certain legislative errors

encumbering the Arbitration Act. The changes can be divided into two groups,

the first comprises technical changes reflecting the new terminology introduced

in Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code (the Civil Code), while the second

consists of the legislative and technical clarification of the existing provisions.

These changes were implemented by Act No. 303/2013 Coll.1 (the amendment)

and took effect at the same time as the new provisions of Czech civil law.

I. General and Terminological Changes

Section 1 of the Arbitration Act, which defines the scope of the law, has been

supplemented to reflect the inclusion of the new Part Seven of the Arbitration

Act, which regulates proceedings before the arbitration commission of an

association. The incorporation of these provisions is explicitly foreseen in

Section 267 of the Civil Code. Although the intention of the Civil Code to

introduce the possibility of subordinating decision-making on disputes

stemming from the administration of an association to an arbitration

commission and the fact that a more detailed definition of the rules of such

proceedings was to be regulated separately2 were well known, the Government’s

draft amendment skirted this issue. The draft provisions inserted into the

Arbitration Act as Sections 40e to 40k resulted from a legislative process,

specifically, the debate on the amendment by the Constitutional Law

Committee of the Czech Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies.3 This effectively

gave rise to a situation where the government bill failed to take account of a

matter that was fundamental to recodification, despite the fact that the
amendment was prepared precisely for this purpose.