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Stockholm Arbitration Report (SAR)

Preview Page SAR 2003 - 1

International commercial arbitration has played an important role in the resolution of disputes arising out of international contracts and other agreements in the area of international trade for many decades. In the USSR, commercial arbitration was, in practice, the only alternative for the resolution of business controversies with foreign partners since the state courts did not deal with such economic disputes.The wide use of international commercial arbitration remains a distinctive feature of the current state of foreign economic relations in Russia. Contributing to this is the fact that special Russian legislation on international commercial arbitration now conforms to modern requirements.

In addition to the special legislation, general rules of the appropriate branch of Russian procedural law also govern the legal relations arising in the context of commercial arbitration. Such rules are fundamentally important to the proper functioning of commercial and, in particular, international arbitration. In fact, the regulations contained in these acts ensures the implementation of the legislation on commercial arbitration including the enforcement of arbitral awards.

The main purpose of the above regulations is to support the development of alternative, i.e. “non-state,” methods of dispute settlement by recognising that commercial arbitration has the same legal effect as litigation in the states courts. This is also why the state courts, in dealing with the application of legislation relating to commercial arbitration, must also control the arbitration proceedings so that they conform to the legal framework within which commercial arbitration courts should act. From this point of view, special attention should be paid to the provisions of the new Code on Arbitrazh Procedure of the Russian Federation (“CAP”), effective September 1, 2002.