New Horizons for Arbitration in Slovakia - Czech and Central European Yearbook of Arbitration - Interaction of Arbitration and Courts - 2015

Author(s): 

Martin Magál

Martina Kasemová

Page Count: 

6 pages

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Published: 

March, 2015

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Originally from Czech and Central European Yearbook of Arbitration - Interaction of Arbitration and Courts - 2015

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New Horizons for Arbitration in Slovakia

 

The year 2002 was crucial for the Slovak arbitration environment, primarily

because of the adoption of Act No. 244/2002 Coll. on arbitration proceedings

(the Slovak Arbitration Act) on the basis of the 1985 version of the

UNCITRAL Model Law (the Model Law). This resulted in Slovakia having a

solid grounding for the development of arbitration, despite there being several

differences and omissions compared to the Model Law’s wording.

For more than 12 years, Slovak arbitration has been significantly affected by two

issues not governed by the Model Law which, in turn, have had negative

practical implications.

 

The first is arbitrability and the second an excessively liberal framework for

institutional arbitration. The latter has resulted in the establishment of

approximately 150 domestic arbitral institutions. The quality of many of these

institutions has been a cause of concern due to their applying practices that are

unacceptable under modern professional and ethical standards of international

arbitration. The main problem was the fact that many consumer disputes were

administered by these institutions in a manner that blatantly disregarded the

consumer protection rules enshrined in EU and Slovak law. This led to a

general hostility from Slovak courts to the concept of arbitration, and to their

subsequently adopting an extremely narrow view of arbitrability, one which

does not take into account the differences between arbitrability in consumer

and commercial disputes.

 

The Slovak arbitration community saw the need for the urgent resolution of

these issues. A draft amendment to the Slovak Arbitration Act (the

Amendment) was therefore prepared by the Ministry of Justice. The draft has

since been approved by the Government and is currently pending final

adoption by the Parliament. The Amendment’s goal is to make Slovakia a true

Model Law country (reflecting the 2006 version of the Model Law) and negate

the effects of the arbitration-unfriendly approach adopted by some Slovak

courts in commercial disputes.

 

Travaux préparatoires in connection with the Amendment started in August

2012. The first step was the Ministry of Justice creating a commission of experts

comprising ministry officials, academic experts, arbitration practitioners and

judges. The commission was instructed to draft a proposal to amend Slovak

arbitration legislation with the aim of achieving full harmonisation of the

commercial arbitration framework with the 2006 version of the Model Law.

Another goal was to set clear boundaries between consumer and commercial

arbitration, so that regulatory restrictions and stricter court interpretations of

the former would not have a negative effect on the latter. The amendment is

intended to take effect as of 1 January 2015. From that date, the arbitration of

consumer disputes will be excluded from the scope of the Slovak Arbitration